Carnivores
by notmanos
Summary: (Season 11) While Sam and Dean end up chasing a mythical beast, a demon friend - ? - of Dean's brings him a case that leads to an entirely different kind of monster.
1. Frailty

**_1 - Frailty_**

It was about the time that the fourth ghoul joined in that everything went off the rails.

Sam had guessed they might have company, but now he was second guessing his methodology while he reloaded the shotgun, the ghouls pounding against the door at his back. Wood was splintering, and it wouldn't hold long. "Dean!" he shouted, hoping for some response, dreading the lack of it.

Dean was supposed to be downstairs, going after the ones that ran that way. It was unclear what made the ghouls want to crash in this crumbling old mansion, but Sam suspected it was the amulet. The guy who use to own this place was a collector of "occult artifacts". Ninety nine percent of which were fake, and could be picked up on Etsy or Ebay if you were bored and doing a little late night impulse buying. But one item stood out. The Amulet of Dahou, which was supposedly the artifact of a genuine black magician, eventually killed by a rival coven. But the amulet supposedly had many qualities, including the ability to appear as anyone - or anything - and render the wearer "immune to any weapon forged by man". No immunity to witchcraft, but hey, you couldn't have everything.

Thing was, when the collectors artifacts went up for auction, the amulet was nowhere to be seen, and since he had no family, there were few if any places it could have gone. Since the people that packed up the artifacts were a dead end, Sam figured the amulet probably hadn't left the house, that the collector had a special hiding place for his only actual treasure that no one ever found. As it turned out, he was not the only one to have come to that conclusion. But he'd been expecting witches or something. Ghouls was a truly surprising development, but sure, they'd have a use for the amulet. Just about everything would, save for angels.

Sam felt the final hinge go, so he shoved off and turned to face the entrance as two ghouls stumbled in over the now fallen door. Sam shot the first one in the head from near point blank range, painting its brains on the near wall. He was unable to get off another shot before the second ghoul shoved the gun barrel up towards the ceiling and tackled him, sinking their teeth in his shoulder. He screamed in pain as he collapsed against the far wall, but he still managed to bring the gun butt down on the ghoul's head. It stumbled back into the third ghoul, and Sam had time to flip the gun around and shoot it in the head. He was hoping to get a twofer, but no such luck, as the third used the second as a shield, and once his head exploded she retreated, along with number four.

Sam quickly ejected the shells and loaded in others, not even paying attention, because after all these years, this was automatic. He could probably do it in his sleep, and, at some point, may have done so. "Dean, where the hell are you?" he shouted, following the trail of the still functional ghouls. You had to destroy the brains, so it was always as messy as hell, and made him feel terrible. Not that he didn't know why he was doing it, it just made him feel like he was some reckless asshole in a derivative first person shooter. Silent Hill, but somehow simultaneously more boring and more terrifying.

His shoulder ached, and every time it moved it felt like the wound was getting bigger. He carefully crept up to doors and looked in gun first, ready to take the head of the first ghoul he saw, but two doors down and he hadn't found either one yet. He kept his ears peeled for noise, for floorboard creaks, or for gunshots that would indicate Dean was still (alive) fighting ghouls. Goddamn it, he knew they shouldn't have separated. Ghouls always had a tendency to be faster, stronger, and generally nastier than you anticipated.

The fourth door was the last on this floor, and Sam braced himself, but it didn't help. He nudged the door open with the shotgun barrel, but the female ghoul grabbed it and yanked Sam into the room, while the male ghoul jumped on him.

Sam managed to keep a hold of the shotgun and fired while the male ghoul straight up chomped on his head. It didn't hurt nearly as much as the bite on his shoulder, but maybe because the skull was a lot harder, or because he had so many shoulder injuries in his life it was a sore spot. The shot was wild, but partially got the ghoul in the face, spinning her around, and Sam slammed hard into the back wall,, attempting to at least stun the ghoul on his back. He then raised the shotgun, pointed it over his head, and fired.

He knew where the ghoul was on him, so he got the head, but blood and tissue rained down on him, and he couldn't help but let out a noise of disgust as he threw down the headless corpse. It was so gross washing ghoul out of your hair.

Also gross? His wild shot had taken part of the jaw off the female ghoul, leaving an open hole in her face. But because she was a ghoul, and not something slightly more mortal, she saw this as no deterrent, and launched herself at him, sinking what was left of her teeth in his arm, and clawing for his eyes. Sam had to turn away, but because she was still biting his arm, took her with, and she almost unbalanced him.

It brought on a little memory of Dean, during their seemingly endless training sessions growing up, telling him, " _Don't let anything take you to the ground. If they have you down, they have an advantage. Don't go down."_ He was right; you were more vulnerable as soon as you were off your feet. Hell, didn't they teach that in MMA now? But he remembered hating this when he was a kid, because it was virtually impossible to keep your feet during any assault by something way bigger than you. Sometimes he hated Dean for that, but when he got older, he reserved the hate for Dad, because he realized he was the root cause. And now it didn't matter at all. So much wasted emotion, and now he simply felt exhausted. Where did depressed hunters go for help exactly?

The shotgun needed reloading, but he couldn't do it one handed, with a ghoul chomping down on his other arm. So he used it as a club, smashing her in the head until the shotgun broke in half and she finally let go, and he pulled out his pistol and shot her in the head. It felt like a mercy killing at this point.

A quick check showed she barely broke the skin on his arm; the leather jacket had taken the brunt of the damage. Lucky for him, relieving her of half her jaw had cut down her bite force significantly. But his shoulder was still throbbing, and he wiped gore off his face, wondering what kind of end of horror movie lunatic he must have resembled. "Dean!" he shouted, still disturbed by the silence. He allowed for the possibility he was half-deafened by the shotgun, but Dean usually made enough noise that ability to hear was optional.

Sam headed down to the ground floor, vowing that if Dean let himself get killed by a bunch of ghouls, he was going to bring him back just to kill him himself.

* * *

Fighting in a creepy old house sucked for many reasons, but the worst one was the crumbling infrastructure. Nothing was quite as solid as it should be, and if you were smart, you could use this as an advantage.

Dean felt like he'd never really run into smart ghouls, but there were first times for every goddamn thing, and tonight was no exception. When he started picking off ghouls like ducks in a shooting gallery, they fled towards the back of the house, and Dean followed, leaving Sam to get the ones who ran upstairs. Dean figured they'd led him to the old dining room - there wasn't any furniture for context clues - when he heard as well as felt the floor give way beneath him.

This was where his years of monster hunting came in handy. He had to make decisions in nanoseconds, and hesitation - as his Dad drilled into his head, over and over again - was death. Dean had already made the decision not to attempt to grab on to the remaining floor to try and prevent the fall. The floor was old, rotted, water damaged - it wouldn't hold him even if he did manage to catch it, and he'd have to give up at least one of his guns to do it. So, fuck it - he was falling. Now, he had to make the decision how he was going to land.

It was a long drop, probably to the creepy as fuck basement, and there was surely a welcoming party waiting for him. The biggest problem in both cases was not knowing the numbers, of how far he had to go, or how many would be waiting for him. Probably not too far - who made basements with opera ceilings? - but the number of ghouls would probably be vomit inducing. He'd heard of ghouls sometimes clumping together, like a family unit, but the nests weren't that big. Did they invite friends? Did they send out a group text ' _Hunter meat on the hoof if you can get here within 10 minute_ s'. Knowing their luck, that was exactly what happened.

Dean couldn't help but picture the Dawn of the Dead remake, where the zombies swamped the bus in the parking lot, the best scene in that entire goddamn mess of a movie. But he couldn't get distracted, and there was no way the basement could even hold that many ghouls, even if it did have an opera ceiling. Dean randomly decided on the number ten, because it was nice and round, and still far too many fucking ghouls in one place at one time.

He had no choice in landing - try and hit and roll, and come up firing. Trying to land on his feet would probably shatter his ankles, his knees, or both, and if that happened, he might as well eat his gun before the ghouls ate him alive. If the ghouls were right there, he wouldn't have a lot of room or time to move. No two ways about this - this was going to _suck_.

Dean smelled them before he ever saw them. They smelled like what they ate when fresh meat wasn't available - rotting corpses. He was falling into a dark cesspool of decaying people, and it was one of those times when he wished he could be a normal person and take a moment to gag. No such luxury.

He hit the ground hard, aware it was cold concrete and it sent an unwelcome shock of pain up his leg that didn't feel injurious, simply annoying. He rolled right into legs, saw shadows reaching for him, and fired both his guns. He had no time to aim, and didn't care. Right now he simply needed breathing room.

Hands clawed at his legs, his arms, but he kept firing, and the ones that got close enough to grab him were close enough to reveal their heads. Blood and brain matter splashed all over him, and he had to keep his lips sealed tight so he didn't accidentally swallow anything. He was in a forest of grabbing arms and gnashing teeth, a nightmare come to life, but he didn't allow himself to think. He noted, he found targets, he kept fighting and he didn't think, so he didn't get freaked out.

One grabbed him by the hair and attempted to pull him deeper into the throng, but Dean blindly shot behind him until it let go. He found space to roll to his feet, and slammed up against the nearest wall back first, so they couldn't attack him from behind. As he popped a clip and slammed another one in, the ghouls who were still functional swarmed him as one, and he did the only thing he could do, which was fire until he saw daylight or he got his head ripped off, whichever came first.

Dean cleared space for himself in an unrelenting shower of gore, and when his second gun clicked empty, he dropped it and pulled out the machete he had strapped to his belt. He had some injuries, some torn skin, some bites, but he was high on enough adrenaline to ignore it for now. It wasn't easy to shoot and slash at the same time, so he alternated or picked a favorite. He'd killed enough of them that a couple of them fled, but not upstairs. "Hey, party's not over yet," Dean shouted, wiping blood out of his eyes with his arm. Now he was starting to hurt, but he had a job to finish. Also, where the hell had they gone?

Ghouls had been known to tunnel occasionally, so he thought that 's what it was, but when Dean turned the corner, gun first as always, he was met with an astoundingly large hole in the far wall. It looked like he could drive the Impala through it, with no damage to the body. How had the foundation withstood such a massive gap? It struck him as illogical - like the supernatural was ever logical? - and then he noticed how smooth the edges were. It was like it was eroded by water or something, but again, that made no sense.

What did make sense? The ghouls didn't make this. They found it, they took advantage of it, but it wasn't theirs.

As he approached it, visually scanning for clues, his arms were starting to tremble, his knee was starting to ache, and all the bits of the battle he didn't allow himself to think about started catching up with him. Dean glanced back, to make sure he wasn't getting flanked, and scanned the throng of bodies on the ground. Ten? Maybe closer to twelve. Jesus. How did he survive that?

He never told anyone this, but sometimes he had no fucking clue how he survived certain things. It was probably training. Head down, emotions off, do the job until you couldn't do it anymore. It bothered Dean sometimes, made him wonder if he had the singular focus of a psychopath or something, but it had, against all odds, kept him alive. More or less. If it ain't broken, don't fix it, right? But Dean wondered if this was the most glaring sign of his own brokenness.

Nope. Couldn't think. Still had a job to finish.

He holstered his machete and reloaded before pulling out a flashlight and shining it into the large abyss. Dean kept the flashlight over the gun, ready to fire at the first thing that jumped out at him, but the ghouls had made the sensible decision to fuck off deeper into the tunnel than go for him again. If it didn't work in a large group, it wasn't going to work with two left. He could feel a breath of cool, fresh air coming through the tunnel, and it smelled like ... water? It was hard to say, with the basement reeking of both alive and dead ghouls, but it was extremely nice.

He heard thudding footsteps over his head, as well as Sam bellow, "Dean!"

"Down here!" he shouted, and was surprised by the depth of the echo from the tunnel. How far did this thing go?

He heard Sam pause on the creaky staircase leading down to the basement. "Holy shit. How many were down here?"

"Didn't count. It was a trap."

"For you or for them? And where's that echo coming from?"

"Come here and find out."

Sam was covered in enough blood that Dean almost laughed, but he imagined he looked as bad, if not worse. They were both final girls, or Carrie after the prom. Oh god, he was a nerd too.

Sam's eyes widened at the tunnel, and his visual scan seemed more comprehensive and disbelieving. "What the hell ..?"

"Some ghouls ran in here, but there's no way they made this."

Sam went up close to an edge and touched it, noting how smooth the edge was. "No fucking way. What could have made this?"

"That's what I was about to ask you," Dean admitted.

Sam shook his head. "Could this be man made?"

"Who would do that and why?"

"They were looking for the amulet?"

Dean fixed him with a disbelieving stare. "Really? That's the best you got?"

Sam looked at him and frowned. "I wasn't expecting to find a subway tunnel in the basement. Excuse me for being low on answers."

It was then Dean noticed blood dripping from Sam's arm, and turned his flashlight on him. "How badly are you hurt?"

"It's nothing. One got a bite in. What about you?"

"I should be dead, but I'm not. All good." Dean glanced down at himself, saw bloody tears in his jeans, his lower left leg nearly black with it. So that's why his boots felt a little squelchy. That was going to hurt later.

Sam gave him the scowl he always gave Dean when he thought he was being too macho, and pointed at his left arm. "Looks like you got bit too."

Dean checked, and saw the tear in his sleeve. Damn it. He almost pointed out he got bit more than once, but that too was something he wasn't thinking about. He was never going to let himself reflect on how close he'd come to dying a ghoul snack. If he ever took a genuine moment to consider all the times he'd nearly died - and in fact, had died - he would curl up in a shivering ball and be comatose for the rest of his miserable life. So he would drink away what he could, and tuck the rest in a corner of his mind where he didn't dare to venture. When he glanced back at Sam, he saw the blood dripping down the side of his face. "Did one of them try and make out with you?"

He seemed both confused and insulted by the implication, but the blood finally dripped in his eye, and he understood. "Oh crap. One of them bit me on the head. I didn't think it was deep."

"Probably isn't. Scalp wounds bleed like a son of a bitch."

All considered, they were both very lucky, and probably should have called it a night and counted their blessings, such as they were. But along with that fucking amulet, they now had this tunnel mystery. They exchanged a look, as years of working together allowed them a purely tacit language. The look was simply a "do we go" and a "yes", all at the same time. So Dean lead the way, and Sam followed, taking out his own flashlight and handgun.

The only sound in the tunnel was their footsteps, and once they were several meters in, Dean heard slow dripping. A water leak, but not a major one. Sam kept moving his flashlight across the side walls, possibly looking for something, most likely enjoying the view. Where it was stone, it was smooth; where it was earth, it was hard packed and more solid than you might have thought. "Dean," Sam finally whispered. Despite the low pitch of his voice, it still echoed in this cavernous space. "This is an engineering marvel. I have no idea what could have made this."

"Twenty bucks says it's nothing good." Dean realized that was a cheat. Of course it was no good. When had it ever been something good?

As if to prove his point, Dean finally saw something in the darkness ahead of them, clumped up on the ground. It was mostly translucent, but it had kind of a rainbow sheen to it when the light hit it at certain angles. There was also a repeating pattern on it, and it was nearly as wide as the tunnel, and so long Dean couldn't see the end of it. He cautiously tapped the edge of it with his boot, and it was thick, spongy, and firm. Ick. Kind of like rubber.

Sam crouched down for a closer look, using the barrel of his pistol to lift an edge of the stuff and examine it. After a few moments, he dropped it suddenly and stood up. "Dude, do you know what this is?"

"No."

"It's a snake skin."

Dean played the light over the surface, and realized that repeating pattern could very well be tightly overlapping scales.

Holy shit.


	2. The Sharpest Lives

_**2 - The Sharpest Lives**_

There was no question they were staying in town until they found the amulet and the giant snake, so they ended up getting rooms at the nearest cheap shit motel. Separate rooms, because they each needed to take eight hour Silkwood showers to wash all the ghoul off of them.

In the shower, Dean took inventory of all his injuries. Lots of relatively shallow cuts, a couple of bites, nothing that needed stitches. He got out the Super Glue and closed all the bleeders, living with the subsequent burn, hoping to drink it away. It took way too long until the water ran clear, but once it did, he got out, got dressed, and finished off the contents of his flask. He had to throw away the clothes, but that was okay. It was neither the first or last wardrobe he'd sacrificed in the name of monster fighting. This was also why they always had spare clothes in the trunk.

Dean knew as soon as Sam was finished decontaminating, Sam would be scouring case files for giant underground serpents, and while that sounded root canal level fun, he needed to drink himself to relaxation if he hoped to get any sleep tonight.

There was a bar down the street, and it looked really sad and depressing, which was perfect. It was dark wood and low lighting inside, TV off, and almost no one was here, so it was perfect.

He ordered a whiskey from the bartender, a good looking kid in his early thirties who, for some damn reason, had a nose stud, and hair that was half-black, half-green. But, you know, whatever floated your boat, and he seemed to be carrying it all off.

On whiskey number two, he asked if he'd had a bad day, and Dean was sorely tempted to say that he'd almost become ghoul jerky, and now there was a giant snake, but he didn't. He didn't feel like getting the _"oh god that guy is super nuts"_ looks and treatment all night. Dean simply agreed.

Because there was hardly anyone else in the place, and nothing to do, he and the bartender ended up talking. They were both horror movie fans, and found lots to talk about. It also felt good to talk about fictional monsters and not the real thing.

After a couple hours, his replacement arrived, a grizzled guy in his mid-forties who looked like a '70's character actor, and while Dean was working on whiskey number five, the green haired bartender - whose name was Chris - came up and told him he was going to go get a bite to eat, and wondered if Dean wanted to join him.

It took a moment, but Dean quickly realized he didn't think he was drunk and needed some food in his system - this was a more romantic invitation.

Son of a bitch - could anything he had said over the last couple of hours constitute flirting? In hindsight ... maybe? Goddamn it. He told Chris maybe some other time, well aware he probably wasn't coming back to this bar again. Dean almost belatedly added, "Please get better taste in men," but didn't dare.

Dean was wondering if he should have another drink or head back to the motel when a guy sat on the barstool right next to his. This guy was in his mid-twenties, and clearly worked out, as he had impressively toned arms, and a well defined chest highlighted by the sheer tightness of his Murder By Death t-shirt. He turned to him with a big smile, and asked, "How you doing, chief?"

Was this a gay bar and he didn't know it? Dean looked around, but figured a gay bar would probably be nicer and cleaner than this one. "And I'm out of here," Dean said, slugging down the last of his whiskey.

"You can't go, Winchester. Do you know how long it's taken me to find you?"

Dean had been getting up, but immediately sat back down and sized the guy up. Muscled, sure, but they looked like gym muscles. No calluses on the knuckles, and he didn't carry himself like he was ready for offense or defense. If he was human, Dean could probably knock him cold with a single shot. If he wasn't human ... things got more complicated. And Dean was sure he wasn't human. "You have five seconds," Dean told him.

The guy raised his eyebrows and sat back slightly. "Holy fucking shit, dude. I haven't seen you in years, and this is the thanks I get?"

"One second."

"We pop a god together and you get shirty with me? Damn, son, that's cold."

He scowled at the man. He was a good looking Latinx kid, but Dean had never seen anyone remotely like him in his life. That he could remember. "What the hell do you mean we popped a god together?"

"In Vermont. Bacchus, remember?"

Bacchus. That name brought memories flooding back, almost none of them good. Mainly being nearly turned into a tree, and how fucking painful that was. Oh, and buried alive. Yeah, Bacchus was a blast. And since he and Cas killed Bacchus - well, Cas killed Bacchus; he and Jenny were only setting the stage for that to occur ... Dean stared at the guy. "Jenny?"

He tapped the tip of his nose and pointed at him as his eyes briefly flashed black. "Yaay, you finally remembered. So how you doing, you old sack of shit? Do I presume my apocalypse summoning just slipped your mind?"

Dean rested his head in his hands, unable to believe how this shitty night somehow kept getting worse. Was there no ceiling on this thing?

The bartender finally came over, and Jenny said cheerfully, "Bring me the biggest glass of your cheapest tequila." As soon as the bartender walked away to get his - her? - order, Jenny nudged him with his elbow. "The whole god killing thing gave me a lot of street cred with other demons, so thanks for that. I didn't tell them about you, though. You get it."

Dean finally raised his head with a sigh. Nope, not drunk enough. "How are you still alive?"

"Because I am awesome, that's how. What about you? I've heard you were dead a couple different times. I also heard you were batting for our team."

Once the bartender dropped off the tumbler full of tequila and left, Dean repeated, "Batting for your team?"

"Demon." Jenny took a big swig of her drink before continuing. "You know, for a guy who's loved by an angel, you sure die a shit ton. And then there's the whole demon thing. How are you not a demon now?"

"I was cured."

"Sure you were," She winked at him in a manner he assumed to be conspiratorial, but who knew at this point?

"What's your name now? I can't keep calling you Jenny."

"Yes you can. I may be a man on the outside, but I'm a woman inside. Sort of. Don't be a gender binary fascist, Winchester."

He really didn't like the way she worded that, but there was probably a decent point buried in there somewhere. There was no reason to assume the gender of the demon matched the gender of the vessel; in fact, odds were good it didn't. Demons technically didn't have a gender anyways; a demon was a demon. Genders were optional. The same was true of angels too. "You do know I'm under no obligation to let you live, right?"

She rolled her eyes. "I knew you'd be like this. Don't get all stabbity on me, Winchester, I have something for you."

Dean watched carefully as she swung a messenger bag around, ready to put distance between him and her and pull out Ruby's knife, but she held up a hand to show she was unarmed while she pulled out what appeared to be a thick file, and plopped it on the bar in front of him. After making sure she wasn't going to suddenly stab him while he was distracted by paperwork, he opened the folder, and found ... well, Sam shit. Photocopies and handwritten notes and photographs. "What the hell is this?"

"Okay, so, I have a problem," Jenny admitted. "I found something, and I don't know what to do with it. And since you're the only hunter I've ever met who didn't try and kill me in the first five minutes, I figured I could dump this off on you."

Dean started flipping through it quickly, seeing crime scene photos and lists of names and addresses. "You know you're gonna hafta tell me more than that."

Jenny sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes. Dean only now noticed the vessel had a neck tattoo on his right side, mostly in the back. Looked like black flames. "Okay, so ... someone's killing former demon hosts. They're killing demons too, but I figured you wouldn't care about that part."

"Wait. Are they killing the vessels with demons in them?"

"Occasionally. But the majority of kills have been vessels that haven't had demons in them for ages."

Dean looked at the top few pages of the folder Jenny had given him. He saw ten names underlined, and at least ten more names with question marks after them. "How would you even know this?"

She scratched her eyebrow and grimaced. "Because ... umm ... it seems to be targeting five of my friends specifically? And I'm afraid I may be next, and if so, that's gonna be, like, a fuck ton of corpses. I rarely stay in a single vessel for longer than a week."

Dean closed the file. Now, he wasn't sober enough for this. A true rarity. "I have so many questions, but I'm not the guy to be asking them. Come on." He threw down a tip, and slid off the bar stool, taking the folder with him.

Jenny's eyes widened in alarm. "What are you doing?"

"I'm taking you to meet Sam. This is more of a Sam thing."

"Oh. You mean Stretch Armstrong?"

"Is that what you call my brother?"

She shrugged. "Basically."

That made him chuckle. "Well, I guess it fits."

"Is that cutie patootie death bringer there too?" Jenny asked. She slid off her stool, and shotgunned her half empty glass of tequila. It was impressive.

"Who?"

She burped, putting the glass back on the bar. "The angel."

Now there was a nickname. "No, he's back at the bunker."

"Oh, you guys have a bunker together? Cute."

Dean didn't know if she meant him and Sam or him and Cas, and honestly, he didn't care either way. Jenny was such a weirdo. She was a demon, so he knew he should have his guard up, but it was hard to take her seriously as much of a threat, just because demons usually didn't act like her in any way, shape, or form. He was kind of curious what her deal was, but he didn't want to encourage her.

Walking back to the motel, she asked, "Aren't you curious what your nickname amongst demons is?"

"I'm John Winchester's blunt instrument, right?"

"That's your old nickname. Your new one is Blue Steel."

Dean nodded. He was okay with that. He'd certainly been called worse in his life.

He knocked on Sam's door, assuming he'd had enough time to scrape all the ghoul off of him, and waited for an acknowledgement before walking in. He had company, after all.

Sam was sitting on his bed, absorbed in something he was reading off his laptop. "Okay, we have a couple of different options here -" he began, then looked up and noticed Dean wasn't alone. Sam instantly gave him one of those tacit looks - is this trouble? - and Dean gave him a micro shake of the head that anyone else probably wouldn't have noticed. Dean imagined, if he and Sam lived long enough, they'd rarely verbally talk to each other. It'd all be expressions and hand signals. That seemed both wildly easier, and incredibly sad.

"Sam, this is Jenny. Jenny, Sam," Dean said, dropping the file on Sam's bed.

Sam looked skeptical. "Jenny?"

"Don't-" Jenny began, but Dean held up his hand to stop her.

"This is the demon who helped me and Cas kill Bacchus a few years ago."

Sam's dubious expression didn't alter. "You made that up."

Now Dean was offended. "I did not. Why do you think I made it up?"

"Bacchus, god of wine? Some sort of badass? Come on. I just assumed you didn't want to tell me you and Cas went on another bender."

"If we had, I would have said. Since when do I lie about killing things?"

Sam hardly even needed to think about it, which was extra insulting. "That time you told me you and Dad hunted and killed the Easter Bunny."

"You were six, and I was being an asshole," Dean replied. He wasn't ever going to forgive him for that, was he?

Jenny suddenly erupted in loud guffaws. Once she caught her breath, she gasped, "You told a kid you killed the Easter Bunny?" She grabbed her stomach as she broke out in more giggles, and both he and Sam were staring daggers at her by the time she stopped. "Oh man, that's wonderful. I think I'm back in love with you, Winchester."

"Great," Dean muttered. He gestured at the file, and said, "Jenny says there's someone going around killing former demon vessels who aren't current demon vessels."

"Seriously?" Sam replied, suddenly all business again. He picked up the file, and looked at the first couple of pages. "Who are Countess, Jazz, Marquis, Sunny, and Rocket?"

"The five demons that have been targeted so far."

"Rocket?" Dean repeated. Could Marvel sue?

Jenny scowled at him. It was slightly less fierce on a male face. "We're demons. Why would keep our boring ass human names if we didn't have to?"

Fair point. Even Crowley's name wasn't really Crowley.

"The demons are dead?" Sam asked.

Jenny shook her head. "Countess and Jazz are still alive, but hiding out, as you might 's hard to fight an enemy when you're not clear who the enemy is."

Boy, did Dean know that feeling. He took a seat in a chair, as his left leg was starting to hurt its way through the protective alcohol shield.

Sam must have started assembling a story out of this, because he was flipping through the pages, looking like he was on the trail of something. "Were the vessels killed before the demon hosts, or after?"

"Marquis was killed before, Sunny after, and I have no idea about Rocket," Jenny admitted. "I thought it was just some over-zealous hunters or something, but then I jumped into some of the investigative officers, and I saw some weird shit. Like, ritual shit."

Sam must have found something akin to what she was saying, because his eyes lit up, and he asked, "Is this a serial killer?"

Oh man, Jenny had punched Sam's sweet spot. He loved his true crime shit, and this was just the kind of rocket fuel he'd mainline, given half the chance.

"I dunno. I was hoping you could tell me."

"Why you thinking serial killer?" Dean wondered.

"Because these crime scene photos show repeated patterns," Sam said, still going through the pictures. "And it's not truly occult. It's almost like a message." He held one of the pictures upside down, and did it again with another one, comparing them.

In a way, it was kind of heartbreaking. In another universe, Sam probably would have been a great detective. But here he was monster hunting. Dean felt he could have had a great career as a professional alcoholic, so it wasn't as much of a loss.

Dean glanced at Jenny, whose body language hadn't really changed from the bar. A little tense, which could be excused since she was a demon amongst hunters, but there was a part of her story he couldn't let go. "What did you guys do?"

Jenny glanced at him warily. "What?"

"You said your five friends here were being targeted, and you were afraid you were next. So who did you piss off?"

"No one. That's why I don't get it."

Dean shook his head. "We're willing to look into this, but you have to be honest with us."

"I am."

"No, you're not."

Jenny rolled her eyes, and looked to Sam for help. "Is he always this much of a dick?"

"Pretty much, but he's right." Sam put the papers down. "There's something you're not telling us."

She looked between them, exasperated. "Oh, so this is why demons hate you."

"I think that's more down to the fact that we've killed a lot," Dean replied.

Her eyes narrowed. "If you didn't have a magic knife and a cute death dealer on your side, I would have loved to test that theory. But, look, I have no idea who's after us. We were a bunch of nobodies, okay? We avoided picking a side, we didn't care about Hell's power struggles. We've simply been on Earth, living our lives and trying to keep our heads down. We didn't do any really evil shit."

"Define really evil," Sam said.

"As in, when Azazel's little cult found us and asked us to do something, we agreed and didn't do it. When Crowley's people asked us to do something, we agreed and we didn't do it. Again, no interest in Hell politics. That's not why we became demons."

Dean was a little surprised by this, but he wasn't sure why. "You became demons on purpose?"

She threw her hands up in frustration. "Yeah. Who wouldn't? Life as a human sucked."

"So, wait," Sam said. "Are you saying you've angered about ninety nine percent of Hell?"

For a moment, Jenny look deeply confused, and Dean could have applauded, because that was a genuine response. Artifice was gone. "What? No, I'm not saying that."

"But you weren't down with Lucifer's plan, or Crowley's. You agreed to work with both, and did neither. Did you really think other demons wouldn't mention this to other demons, and realize what you'd done?"

"Crowley would have definitely found out," Dean said. He micromanaged the shit out of Hell, until he got too caught up in his own drama.

Jenny looked between them, clearly nonplussed, and a bit of panic started edging into her eyes. She had genuinely not considered this possibility. "Uh ... um."

"Yeah," Sam said. "Have you considered you're being hunted by Hell?"

The way her expression fell, she hadn't. But after a few seconds, she seemed to rally. "But why kill the former vessels? Hell would just go after us. What did they have to do with any of this?"

And that was a good point. Hell would take the demons, and wouldn't give a shit about any past or even current vessel. He exchanged a look with Sam that said the same thing. There was a case here, but there might in fact be two things in play - Hell was after Jenny and her friends. You could take that as a given. But who was after the vessels, and why?

"That's what we're going to have to find out," Sam said, resuming his once over of the files. "But if Hell's after you, we might not be able to help you."

"But don't you guys have an in with Hell? I mean, you were both trapped down there, yet here you are. And didn't you used to be Crowley's boyfriend?" She directed that last bit at Dean.

It was his turn to scowl at her. "If it's a demon on demon fight, there's no reason for us to get involved."

She scoffed. "No reason? That's the thanks I get, huh Winchester? I didn't realize you were a coward."

He ignored the personal dig. Why did demons think he gave a shit about their name calling? "You wanted out of that town as much as I did. Thank you for helping us kill Bacchus, but don't start pretending you did it out of the goodness of your heart. We all had our reasons. You don't owe me anything, and I don't owe you anything."

She frowned, crossing her arms over her chest. He expected a nasty come back, but it didn;t happen. Maybe she didn't know what to say.

There was a moment of awkward silence that Dean felt no compunction to fill, and the more it made Jenny visibly uncomfortable, the more he wished it would go on longer.

Sam gave in, though. "Look. We're on a case right now, so how about you help us, and we help you?"

Dean snickered at the suspicious look she was giving them now. What, like this whole thing was a trap they engineered? They weren't that good. "How exactly?"

"We need to find two things," Sam told her. "An amulet and a large serpent. Those may be related in a way I haven't figured out yet. If you help us do that, we'll help keep you alive and off Hell's radar for the duration." Dean wasn't sure if Sam thought these cases were bigger than them, and they needed all the help they could get, or if he was actually being kind to a demon in trouble. Possibly a bit of both.

Her scowl cut deep furrows in her face. It was a hint that the thing inside was much, much older than the meat suit. "This is blackmail."

Dean decided to back Sam's play. If he thought they might have needed her, it was okay by him. "It's the best deal you're going to get. So take it or walk out of here."

"Are you going to give me that five seconds shit again?"

"Nope."

She sighed in a disgusted way, and rolled her eyes. "It's not like I have a choice here, is it?"

"That's the spirit," Dean said. "And if you even think about double crossing us, all I have to do is send one text to Crowley, and you're done."

She seemed genuinely shocked. "You have a direct line to Crowley?"

"Perks of being the ex," he replied, with a slight sneer.

Who were these creatures that didn't know he could be a smart ass too? Had they not been paying attention at all?


	3. Picture of Health

**_3 - Picture of Health_**

Sam gave Jenny her first assignment, namely finding out if anyone in the demon community had seen or heard anyone talking about about a giant serpent. Now while you would think it was impossible to miss it, one thing Dean had learned really quickly as a hunter was people saw what they wanted to see. If they really didn't want to believe they saw a certain thing - say, a demon, or a werewolf - they wouldn't. They'd see a trick of the light, or a guy with really fucked up teeth. This was how monsters could exist every day, and have few people really notice them. People had to participate in their own denial, and were usually happy to do so.

The things that went bump in the night didn't bother. Why would they? They were among the things people didn't see. There was no reason for them to pretend they didn't exist. If there was a giant snake around, they'd know. People might not.

As soon as Jenny left, still giving them dirty looks, Dean said, "Well, this stinks out loud."

"You think she's lying?" Sam asked.

"No, I think she's genuinely freaked out, and never guessed Hell could want her dead, but ... something's off about all of this."

"You'll get no argument from me," Sam said, picking up the folder. "It does occur to me, can a demon tell another demon's once inhabited a person without possessing them, or not?"

Dean had no idea if he was simply asking the question, or if he was asking him specifically. Truth was, Dean didn't really remember being a demon; apparently the cure wiped out a lot of the memories. Or, he repressed them. He couldn't deny that he had an amazing ability to repress just about everything. It started when he repressed his grief over Mom dying, and he hadn't looked back since. If they had medals for it, he'd win the sweepstakes every fucking year. "I don't know. I was gonna call Cas, I'll see if he knows."

Sam nodded, looking at the files again. Now that he had them, it was probably going to be near impossible for him to set them aside. "Say hi for me."

Dean levered himself out of the chair, pretending his leg didn't hurt - yaay repression! - and left Sam with his nose buried in the crime files, big snake forgotten for the moment.

Dean got an elastic bandage from the emergency kit and wrapped his left ankle for a bit of extra stability. He managed not to shatter his leg upon landing, but he still tweaked it, which was annoying enough. Fucking ghouls. Once he was settled in his room, and gulped down a Tylenol codeine, he called Cas.

Cas was still recovering from everything back at the bunker. In a way, it was a little frightening how fragile he seemed in the beginning. This was the kick ass angel who defied Zachariah, and cut Bacchus in half? Dean had this terrible urge to "hover", as Sam occasionally accused him of doing, make sure he was okay, protect him from whatever came down the pike. Was that fair? Yes. But Sam thought Cas might need a little space, and Dean reluctantly agreed. Was it too much to ask that shitty things stop happening to all of them for like one week? You'd think by now they'd all earned some peace. Was a vacation somewhere demon and trouble free really way too much to ask? He still really wanted to go to Amsterdam sometime.

"Hello Dean," Cas said, picking up the phone on ring two. He sounded tired, but cheerful, which was an improvement.

"Hey Cas. How are you doing?"

"Fine. I was wondering if you wanted me to correct a book in your library?"

In a way, talking with Cas was fun, because you never had any idea where conversations were going to go. It was like having a surrealistic comedy improv troupe in your pocket. Although less annoying than that would be. "Huh?"

"I read the library, and -"

"You read the library?"

"Yes, all the books in it. And I found this ancient text written in very poorly translated Aramaic," Cas went on, as if any of this was a reasonable thing to say. "The errors were very frustrating, and could lead to trouble if anyone ever needs to use it. Can I fix it?"

Dean was briefly flabbergasted. How many thousands of books were in the library in the bunker? It was ridiculous. And it probably took Cas all of ten minutes to read every single one, assuming he even took a break to sit down. Many of them were in super obscure languages, and Sam had actually found a couple that were encrypted in some fashion, because they were unlike any language he had ever seen. Had Cas managed to read those as well? "Sure."

"Good. Those syntax errors were really bothering me."

He put a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing, and fought the urge down by concentrating on the throbbing in his ankle. "Hey, Cas, I had a question for you."

"Of course." Dean could hear him putting a book on the table in the background. "Can demons look at a person and know if they've been possessed at any time in their life?"

He was quiet for a moment. "As far as I know, no lesser - or average - demon could. Higher demons could. Why?"

"We may have stumbled upon someone killing former demon vessels. Would a demon that could tell be able to say which demon possessed the person?"

"That is an interesting question. To my knowledge, no. Maybe if they possessed the person themselves ..? But even then, the demon possession would have to be extremely recent. Demons leave trauma behind, but nothing of themselves."

That was exactly what Dean was afraid of. The killer probably wasn't a fellow demon. Then who? "Do you know of anything capable of that?"

Cas didn't even hesitate. "An angel could."

"An angel?"

"Yes. We see former possessions as a smudge on one's soul. Barely noticeable." Dean wondered if he added that last part for him. "We can usually tell them apart too. It's like a scent ... except not a scent. Do you know what I mean?"

"Not at all."

"It's very difficult to explain to a being with only five senses. I'm sorry."

Oh, this was new. "How many sense do angels have?"

Now he paused, possibly doing math in his head. "Twenty eight? Unless .. no, I think twenty eight is the correct number."

Twenty eight? How ... what ... Nope. Dean just abandoned ship right there. Cas was family, but Cas was also a galactic level energy being about as old as the earth. He had a field of reference stupid primates like himself would never fully understand. All they could do was try, and trust him. Frankly, the more frightening stuff he learned about angels, the more Dean realized that Cas had always been pulling his punches from day one. With the benefit of hindsight, he knew Cas could have sneezed and wiped them all off the map any time he wanted. He could have instantly brainwashed Dean into being his robot, and there would have been fuck all he could have done about it. Cas had always been a kind hearted angel, and look how he suffered for it. Angels were soldiers; they weren't supposed to have a conscience. "That's impressive." He wasn't going to ask, but now he kind of had to. "Do souls have a smell?"

"In a manner of speaking. They also have a sound. It's like ... a crystal chime, I suppose."

Again, he didn't want to know, but he kind of had to. "My soul has a smell?"

"Yes. It's very ... cedar-y."

"Cedar-y?" He hadn't been expecting that. What had he been expecting? New car smell? Gunpowder?

"Yes. Green and wild. Very pleasant. Sam's smells like fresh bread."

Okay, yeah, he could kind of see that one. "You could be making this up and I would never know."

"Yes, I could be. But I'm not."

Dean believed him. Cas wasn't the type to do that. "Do angel possessions leave a mark on a soul?"

"Yes. It's like a ... huh. How do I explain it?" He was quiet for a moment as he considered possibilities. "It's like a fragment of a prism. The opposite of a demon smudge."

That made sense too. "Thanks, Cas. This has been helpful, and really informative."

"Dean," he said, in his best _I'm serious_ tone. "Do you need my help?"

Was Cas even field ready at this point? He didn't want to rush him. It could make things worse, and Cas had suffered enough. "Not yet. We're still working on the amulet thing. If we start working this case, I'll let you know ASAP."

"Dean," he said, still in that tone of voice.

It was hard if not impossible to get anything past Cas, and he must have known he was equivocating. He didn't want him hurt anymore - that wasn't a bad impulse. "I promise you, I'll let you know, okay? But right now, it's crumbling mansions and ghouls. You'd get bored really fast. Actually, I'm bored already, and we're not even done."

"Are you okay?" Cas's voice had now dropped to concerned mode. Dean wondered what he said, or what he'd given away that let him know how genuinely exhausted he was.

"Fine, just tired." It wasn't a complete lie. The painkillers and booze combo might have taken the edge off, but it also left him feeling pretty sleepy.

"Get some sleep," Cas advised. Not in a clueless angel way, but a kind way.

"I'll try. And if you could decipher those encrypted books, Sam would love it."

"Oh, those? I could do those. They're like a rail fence cipher, only -"

"This is a Sam thing," Dean interrupted.

"Yes, it is. I apologize," he replied solemnly.

"Have fun," Dean told him, and ended the call. Cas sounded stronger than he had last time he'd talked to him, and the fact that he was letting something as minor as shitty translation bug him was a positive sign. Any time something small annoyed you, you were on your way back to normal.

Dean knew he should get up and go back to Sam's room, and break the bad news in person. But with his leg propped up on a pillow, and the mellow warmth of the painkillers in his system loosening every muscle in his body, he didn't feel like getting up. He hardly felt like moving at all. So he went ahead and called Sam.

Sam answered even faster than Cas. "Something wrong?"

Was it funny or sad that their first impulse was always trouble? Probably a little of both, much like their lives. "Only in an abstract sense. I just talked to Cas, and it's highly unlikely that the killer going after former demon vessels is a demon. There is a better possibility it's an angel."

"What?" Sam's voice seemed to drop an octave in surprise.

"An angel can see who has been possessed by a demon, and which demon in particular."

"How does that make sense? Why would an angel kill former demon vessels?"

"What about this scenario makes any sense?" Dean countered. "If it is an angel, it's an angel working for Hell, possibly. How does that work?"

"Dude, we are missing something big. There's no way that's happening."

"Agreed. I'll try and get it out of Jenny tomorrow. I wonder if their little group pissed off Heaven as well as Hell."

"How would any demon do that and survive a single day longer?" Sam replied. "God, this is like trying to place chess with three pieces on a Monopoly board." After a moment, in which Dean could hear the shuffling of papers, Sam asked, "Why didn't you just come back, you lazy asshole?"

"Hey, I found the good spot on the mattress, and I ain't moving. I always lose it when I do."

Sam was suspiciously silent for several seconds. "How badly are you hurt?"

"I'm not. Bite and cuts, same as you."

Sam scoffed. "I thought you were limping when you left. Goddamn it, Dean."

"It's nothing. I tweaked my ankle, that's all. It'll be fine tomorrow."

"Please tell me it's not sprained."

"It's not. I know what those feel like. I think I just pulled something landing."

"Landing?"

"Yeah. I fell through the floor. It was a trap, remember?"

Sam sighed. "You fell through the floor, and you didn't lead off with that?"

"It ain't the first time."

There was a pause while there a repeated muffled noise. Sam hitting his mattress, if he was judging the sound correctly. "What was the drop? Fifteen feet, twenty?"

"No idea. Doesn't matter."

"It fucking does matter and you know it. You can't play hurt, Dean."

"Don't overreact. I feel great right now."

Sam clicked his tongue. "How many?"

Dean needed a moment to make sure he hadn't spaced out and missed part of the conversation. "How many what?"

"How many drinks, how many painkillers?"

Part of him hated being this predictable. "Just a couple."

"Dean."

"Sam," he replied, doing his best not to giggle. Okay, maybe he had overindulged a little bit, but didn't he feel great?

"Sleep on your side so you don't choke on your own vomit. And if you're still limping tomorrow, we're hitting the emergency room."

"I'm not-"

"Shut up," Sam interrupted. He sounded genuinely angry. "We're not doing this. You didn't come back just to beat the hell out of yourself again. Give a shit about yourself, Dean, so we don't end up back where we were before."

Dean wanted to protest, but Sam's rage had shamed him. He didn't see this as beating himself up, but he wouldn't, would he? Dean figured, if he got hurt, he deserved it. He wasn't good enough, fast enough, smart enough. Any pain was his doing, in a roundabout way. That wasn't healthy, and at least Dean had the self-awareness to know that now. That was progress, right? "I promise you, it's nothing. And if it's still bothering me tomorrow, we'll got to the E.R. , okay? Speaking of which, how's your shoulder?"

"Don't change the subject."

"I'm not. You may need to go too."

Sam sighed again, but this time it was simply tired. "I don't. I didn't need any stitches, it just hit that same spot. I don't know how they always know what your weak spot is and go for it."

"You've had your wing busted too many times. There's probably a demon Facebook page where they trade injury tips for us. _'Sam's right arm's been hurt before'_ , and ' _Dean's liver's on the verge of collapse'_. "

"Joking will not save you," Sam warned. "Although I wouldn't be surprised if they do."

Absolutely. It was a new age, and even demons needed to keep up with the times.

* * *

Sam slept really poorly, and got up shortly after sunrise, as he was tired of pretending sleep was even remotely in the cards. His shoulder was bugging him a little - it felt bruised, and the skin had turned a purplish-black overnight, as that was what happened when you were bit really hard - but it was mostly thoughts that kept him awake. They went around in his mind like a nauseating tilt-a-whirl, and he couldn't seem to shut his brain off.

The problem was, there was so much going on. The gigantic snake, on its own, was bad enough. An angel on a killing spree? Seriously, there had to be a limit to shit they had to handle. Were they never going to hit it? At the rate it was going, Sam felt they had their answer - no. In fact, the answer was fuck no, with a capital F.U. Now that they had an answer, it was time to move on.

He wanted to check on Dean, but he assumed he was sleeping great since he got loaded to the gills, so Sam grabbed his laptop and went to the coffee shop on the next block. It was open, with the early morning risers already lining up for their caffeine fix, and he found an out of the way corner table to sit and do some research.

Sam had discovered this town used to have a big lake monster myth. The Lake Hope Monster, supposedly something like the Loch Ness Monster, except smaller and given the really unimaginative nickname "Hope". It had existed since the town's founding, but leveled off almost entirely in the early 1950's, not coincidentally about the same time all the waterfront property had been developed. Now it existed only as a mascot of the local high school, and one little league team. It had a brief resurgence in popularity when The X-Files was on, but not enough to sustain itself.

Dean had mentioned the smell of water in the tunnel last night, and while it was difficult to smell past ghoul blood and guts, he was right. And it made Sam wonder about underground water sources and tributaries. It was probably a coincidence, but Sam found himself chasing threads. Could some type of aquatic monster actually been in the lake? And if so, when people arrived with machines, disrupting its quiet, could it have literally gone underground? Admittedly, aquatic things didn't shed their skin ... that they knew of. Who knew what they were dealing with here? At the moment, he couldn't rule anything out.

Sam got up to get his coffee, and when he returned to his table, Jenny, still wearing the musclebound Lantinx guy she was wearing last night, was sitting in his chair, viewing his laptop. "Lake monsters?" she said. "Isn't that a bit woo-woo for you?"

Sam snatched his computer away, and took a seat on the other side of the table. "What have you found out?"

Jenny looked around, pushing her black sunglasses up. Not only were those new, but it wasn't sunny enough yet to warrant those. "Shouldn't we wait for Blue Steel to come back?"

It took him a moment. "Do you mean Dean?" Yeah, it kind of fit.

"I do indeed."

"He's not here. And since's he not, let me tell you this - if you keep lying to us, not only are we're not going to help you, but I'm tempted to exorcise you right here in this coffee shop and be done with it."

Jenny sat back, genuinely shocked. "You _wouldn't_." Sam simply stared at her until she said, "Holy shit. You would."

He nodded. "I'm not Dean. I don't know you, I don't know what you did for him, and I don't care. What I do care is you dragging us into some kind of battle between Heaven and Hell that could get us all killed. I just got my brother back, and I am not losing him like that."

Jenny's eyes widened. "What do you mean a war between Heaven and Hell? What does Heaven have to do with anything?"

Fantastic. She didn't know.


	4. Afterparty

_**4 - Afterparty**_

"You've never pissed off an angel, have you?" Sam asked, aware the answer was no. He had tried to imagine a scenario where a demon could anger an angel and somehow live through it, and he had a hard time getting past step one. Well, Crowley had survived Cas, but they had a deal at the time, and from what Dean told him, Crowley got the fuck out of there as soon as he realized how angry Cas was. That was a general rule of surviving any powerful bastard that wanted to kill you: run. The thing was, with angels, it usually didn't work.

Sam was sure Jenny's eyes couldn't get any wider. "Hell no! Do you think I'm an idiot? The only angel I've ever gotten within eye-shot of was lovesick Romeo, and that's it."

"Lovesick Romeo?"

"You know, cutie pie. Dean's angel."

"Cas? "He had never heard him described like that. Although he could see all of these descriptors fitting him well.

Jenny nodded. "I'm not stupid. I know angels equal death. The only reason I was ever around Cutie Pie was because I had no choice in the matter, and Dean seemed to have him under control."

Sam almost smiled at that. Castiel, being an angel, was never really under anyone's control (except his angel bosses, but that was another story). Mainly, he just played along with them. Sam did occasionally wonder how that worked, and how things looked from Cas's side, but he knew his imagination would always fall short of reality. "What about your friends?"

Jenny froze briefly. He might have thought he imagined it, except Sam knew he hadn't. "What about them?"

"Have they pissed off any angels? Or Heaven in any respect?"

"No! I mean, what demon would be so dumb ..?" Jenny suddenly put her head in her hands, and groaned. "I dunno. I mean, we've all done things we regret, right?"

Sam couldn't help but grimace at that. Where did his list start? Was it Ruby and the demon blood? Or did it go back farther, to leaving the family and getting Jess killed? His pile of regrets kept adding up, year after year, until he could barely see over the top of them. There had to be a point where you cut your losses and gave up, but Sam knew he couldn't think like that. Keep moving forward, one step at a time, and not think about the things gaining on him. He hadn't fought this long and this hard just to let the demons win. "You need to find out immediately. Contact your friends, and see who pissed off Heaven and why. It may be your only way of surviving this, if that's even possible."

Jenny looked up, frowning. "I thought you were supposed to be the nice brother."

"You thought wrong." Why was he always pegged the nice one? He was the one with demon blood. Did everyone collectively forget he broke the last seal and kicked off the apocalypse? When you almost ended the world, the last thing you should ever be called was nice. Dean was the one with the fan club, who made friends wherever he went - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, small god besieged towns in Vermont. The one friend Sam had ever made in the hunting world was a demon who toyed with him sexually, mentally, and emotionally, and set him up to free Lucifer. "Niceness" was really relative, and extremely overrated. "Before you go, has anyone seen a big serpent around here?"

"See, uh, that's the thing," Jenny said. She grabbed Sam's coffee and had a swig before he could stop her. "There's nobody here."

Sam looked around at the half full coffee shop, and the healthy line up of people waiting for coffee. "What?"

She frowned and waved her hand dismissively. "You come to this place, and you order plain black coffee? What the hell kind of freak are you?"

Sam scowled at the freak remark. "Are you saying there's no demons in town?"

"No demons, no vampires, no ... nothing. Apparently there were a bunch of ghouls, but these maniacs slaughtered most of them, and the rest decided it was a good time to get out of Dodge."

Sam decided to overlook the maniac comment too. "How long has this town been without demons? Since yesterday?"

Jenny shrugged. "Don't know, dude. I wasn't here yesterday."

Sam rubbed his forehead, trying to swallow back his annoyance. Truth was, she was only responsible for eighty percent of it. Okay, maybe eighty five percent. You'd think no beasts in town was a good thing, but it was full red alert bad. It usually meant something scared them off. And what scared off such a wide array of monsters? Sam really wanted to believe it was him and Dean, but couldn't even entertain the idea for a millisecond. There was something here, and it was defcon one level terrifying. Sam's head was starting to ache from the strain of trying to connect all these threads together - giant snake, amulet, scared demons, a possibly killer angel ...

Wait. Amulet and snake. Why did that feel like something?

He opened his laptop, and started searching. Jenny huffed. "Sorry if I'm bothering you."

"Go talk to your friends, find out who pissed off Heaven. And release this vessel. Try and find someone more suitable."

"What do you mean more suitable?"

"Long term coma patient, body alive but soul gone, that sort of thing. People aren't stolen cars you can joyride in."

She huffed again, and Sam pointedly ignored her. "The demon underground is right about you. You are a buzzkill."

Sam didn't even look up as Jenny got up and left. He'd been called worse.

* * *

Dean thought his overwhelming need to pee woke him up.

He woke up groggy, but a good kind, a drugged out, deep sleep after-effect he only got nowadays when he went a little too heavy on the booze, painkillers, or both. So much was going on, and he didn't know how to fix any of it. If he thought about it too long, the torment followed him nonstop. Which was where good old repression came through - he wasn't thinking about it, so it was all okay, right?

He did notice, on the way to the bathroom, his ankle barely hurt, so he got to rub that in Sam's face. See, he was good! Fine and dandy. As were most people who drank themselves to sleep. That was super healthy.

Dean was thinking of taking a shower, but something was nagging at the back of his mind. It took him a second or two to figure out what. It wasn't just his bladder that woke him up.

He stuck his head out the bathroom door and listened. It took a few seconds, as this cheap shit motel was close to the highway, and road noise crashed and receded constantly like an oncoming tide,

But there it was - a tiny scritching noise, coming from the door. It was so small, and so hard to hear, Dean figured it wouldn't have woken him up all by itself. Or maybe it would have, who knew? But Dean knew what it was - someone picking the lock.

He returned to his bed, and almost grabbed the gun beneath his pillow, but hesitated. What if there were people in the room opposite? A stray bullet could punch through these walls like cardboard. And Sam was in the room on the left, and while his help would probably be appreciated, again, bullets flying around people was not ideal. So Dean retrieved his knife from the bedside drawer, because of course he had a knife there. He couldn't sleep at all unless he knew he had weapons within easy reach if he had to roll out of a dead sleep and fight. God, that was strangely painful, not easy to do, and he'd done it more times than he was comfortable admitting. At least, if he ever got an epitaph, he could get credit for being a well trained dog.

Dean then went to the wall beside the door, and waited. They wanted in his room? Fine. They could come in. He hoped they knew what they were in for.

He took a couple of deep breaths, focusing. Dean didn't really have to do anything. It was all muscle memory now. His body knew what to do. He simply had to get out of his own way. The story of his life, really.

The door opened, and it opened slow, as apparently whoever was on the other side still had hopes of ambushing Dean in his sleep. He saw a glimpse of hands, a broad shouldered man coming in the door, and Dean had two possibilities here. One, an instant kill strike. Jam the blade in the side of his neck, and take on whoever followed after while this son of a bitch bled out on the rug. Or number two, simply stun him, by hitting him in the temple with the butt of the knife, and taking on whoever followed. His gut instinct was number one, but he had no idea what he was facing here or why, which meant he needed live people capable of talking, so he went with number two.

The man saw the movement in the corner of his eye, and was turning towards Dean, but not fast enough, as he punched him in the temple. He crumpled instantly, but Dean saw a flash of a gun barrel, and grabbed the arm of the man coming in behind him, dislocating his arm with a quick twist and an audible pop, He screamed as the gun dropped from his hand, and Dean automatically kicked it away as another gun was leveled at him from person number three. "Stop it, Winchester! We just want to t -"

Dean kicked dislocated shoulder boy in the gut, sending him flying back into the woman holding the gun, and they both fell into the parking lot. Years of well developed hunter sense told him someone was closer than they should be, and he got a hand up as a skinny kid who'd been hiding outside the motel door wrapped a metal garrote around his neck.

The wire started to cut into his fingers as he slammed himself forcefully into the motel wall, using the boy's body as a buffer. The first slam took his breath out in a huff, but the kid kept hanging on. By the third hit, Dean could hear ribs crack, and felt a loosening of the wire. He tossed the kid off his back, and onto the hood of some piece of shit Honda, which he hit hard enough to break a headlight.

There was a close gunshot, and Dean heaved the kid back up onto his feet and held the knife at his throat as he spun to face the woman with a gun. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" she snapped, aiming the gun in his general direction. She'd have to shoot the kid to get to him, and he didn't think she would, but if she was a demon, sure. If they _were_ demons, they were fucking lame. "You fucking psycho! Can you hold on for a second?"

"You break into my motel room and attack me, and I'm the psycho?" While all of this was going on, the guy with the dislocated shoulder was curled up in a ball on the sidewalk, sobbing. Did Dean maybe break something on him too? Possibly. The different in force and angle was minuscule.

The woman was average sized, but rangy, with the kind of wiry build you sometimes saw on people with physically demanding jobs. She wore jeans and a brown leather jacket, and a t-shirt advertising a bar called Maynard's that he'd never heard of. Her hair was mid-length and brown, and her eyes were a tired, washed out blue. If he had to guess her age, it was anywhere between mid-thirties to mid-forties. The gun was a small caliber Beretta, nothing special, best for close up jobs and growing shittier every foot of distance you added. Currently, Dean figured she'd be lucky to wound him, but he played along, because there was no harm in it. "We heard about you," she said.

"Yeah, I gotta rep, so why did you think this was a smart move?"

The guy he nailed in the temple groaned. He wasn't knocked out, but he was stunned enough that it didn't matter. Dean, out of the corner of his eye, saw him pull something out of his jacket and he turned slightly to keep the boy as a human shield, but what the man pulled out was not a gun, but a flask. Dean calculated odds, and decided that with their shitty means of entry, attack, and weapons, this couldn't be anything that special.

The man flung liquid out of the flask, which mainly hit the boy, but a bit of it splashed on his arm. Dean could see for himself it appeared to be water. Wait a minute. "Holy water?" Dean said, and shoved the boy away in disgust. "You think I'm a demon?"

"Last we heard, Dean Winchester flipped to the Hell team," she said, gun still aimed in his direction.

He gazed at her scornfully, tucking his knife away in his pants. Hunters. "You're behind the times. I'm human again. And you and I both know that gun ain't gonna hurt me unless you go point blank."

Suddenly, it occurred to him what was wrong with this picture. There had been a gun shot, and Sam wasn't here. "What did you do to Sam? If you hurt him ..."

He started advancing on the woman, and she backed up, gun still out, but they both knew it was kind of pointless here. She should have brought a Glock, or at least something with a bit more stopping power. "We've done nothing to him. He's not in his room."

Sam's door was ajar. A quick glance up at the sky told Dean it was well past sunrise, so yeah, it was more than likely Sam was gone. Along with being health conscious, Sam was big on being an early riser, which annoyed Dean no end. He was a night owl, whether it was by habit or not.

"How the hell can you be human again?" the kid said. He was anywhere between seventeen and twenty seven; he was a string bean with one of those extremely youthful faces that would see him carded well into his thirties. He also winced, and hugged himself. Yep, cracked ribs.

"My life is fucking ridiculous, that's how." Dean cut a harsh look at the kid. "Garrote on a demon?"

"It's silver wire," he said.

Dean shook his head. "I was a demon, not a werewolf." He looked around at this group, at the two standing and the two men on the ground, and asked, "Who the fuck are you people? And lady, use the gun or put it away."

For a moment, she seemed conflicted, like she really did want to shoot him, but again, small caliber Beretta. She was going to have to get in closer to do any damage, and clearly she didn't want to. She reluctantly holstered the gun. "I'm Sue. That's Tate," she said, gesturing to the kid. "Dmitri," she said, referring to the guy who had the holy water. "And Vaughn." Sobbing boy.

"You know, if I was a demon, you'd all be minutes dead by now. This was a terrible plan."

Sue took out her phone, and started playing an audio file. The exorcism rites. Dean shook his head. "Nope. Doesn't make it any better."

"You're such a fucking expert?" Tate snapped.

"I've literally been to Hell and back. How about you?"

The kid briefly met his eyes and looked away. That was exactly what Dean thought.

Sam appeared, cautiously walking across the parking lot, his hand in his laptop bag. Dean knew he had them covered with a gun, but wasn't sure if this group of sad ass hunters knew it as well. Once more, they had an entire conversation in looks, that ended with _'It's okay, but don't stand down yet'._ "What did I miss?" Sam asked.

"They came to exorcise me."

"What?"

Dmitri had managed to pull himself up to his feet. He wasn't bleeding, but a nasty goose egg was already starting to form at his temple. He probably needed to get checked for a concussion. "He was just a stop on the way. How in the hell is he human again?"

"It's complicated," Sam said. He belatedly frowned. "What do you mean a stop on the way?"

The group exchanged their own communicative glances, and Dean realized they weren't sure they could trust them. How far had they fallen in the eyes of other hunters? "We've been hunting a demon for the past couple of weeks," Sue said. "And once we figured out you were in town too, we figured what the hell. Two birds, one stone."

Now he and Sam shared a different, but all too common look between them. The _oh shit_ look.

They were hunting Jenny, weren't they? Great. They needed one more problem to handle.


	5. Another Bed

_**5 - Another Bed**_

The group of hunters decided a trip to the E.R. was probably a good next stop for them, and while they left as a group, Dean had a feeling they would be back too soon for anyone's good.

He went back into his motel room and sat on the edge of his bed, putting his head in his hands. "Think it'd be too much for us to catch a break for once, huh?"

Sam followed, closing the door behind him. "Was that at all a fair fight?"

Dean looked up at him. "They broke into my room."

"I get that. But you fucked them up pretty good."

He scowled. "It was four against one."

"The one who's been a hunter for most of his life. The one who fought his way through Purgatory." At Dean's eye roll, he added, "It wouldn't have been a fair fight against me either. We've been hunting too long. We're hair triggers."

"So what do you suggest we do? Wear 'Beware of Dog' signs around our necks?"

Sam tilted his head in that way he did when something Dean said totally baffled him. "There has to be at least one step before that."

Dean imagined there was. He also imagined there wasn't enough therapy in the universe for either of them. "As far as I see it, we have two options. When Jenny comes back, we tell her hunters are here and she needs to leave. We'll work the case without her. Or two, we play dumb, and see if we can keep up the ruse long enough to pull up stakes and leave, with no one the wiser."

"You forgot option three," Sam said. "We let the hunters work their case."

Sam had these moments of cold blooded-ness, even with his soul intact. They were rare, but they did occur. "And let them kill Jenny?"

"Maybe. Maybe not." At Dean's look, he added, "Every time we get friendly with demons, Dean, it always bites us on the ass. You said it yourself, you owe nothing to her. And while I'm sure the fact that we can contact Crowley at any time will deter her from betraying us, I'm not sure it's enough to stop her."

"So we betray her first?" On the one hand, Sam was most likely right. Demons never did add up to anything but trouble at best, and Crowley could be used as a case in point. But the thought of doing something so ... demon-ish left a bad taste in his mouth.

Even Sam looked a bit queasy when it was put that way. "No. But we don't have to protect her, either."

"Didn't we say we would?"

"Not from hunters."

Dean sighed, and rubbed the back of his neck, which was still a little sore from his attempted strangulation. It was then Sam stepped forward, looking concerned. "Are you bleeding?"

He'd forgotten the garrote cut into his fingers. It wasn't deep, but he bet it would get annoying sooner rather than later. Much like everything else. "It's nothing. We need to decide what we're doing before either of them returns."

Sam gave him his patented pissy look again, the one that said he knew Dean was denying something and being an ass, but he let him have it this time. Only about forty percent of the time Sam didn't let it go. "My vote is we stay out of the way. If the hunters find Jenny, and she doesn't get wise to them first, that's on her. I mean, she's a demon. These probably aren't the first or last hunters she's ducked."

Dean wondered what was bothering him about this. Much like figuring out someone picking his lock second thing, it seemed to be his day to play catch up. "The timing's weird, isn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"She comes to us, because someone's killing former demon vessels. And now these hunters show up ..." Something clicked into Dean's mind. He felt like an idiot since it took him so long to get here. "Oh shit. I'm a former demon vessel."

Genuine alarm flared into Sam's eyes. That hadn't occurred to him either. "No, you're not. That was due to the Mark of Cain. It was different."

"Was it? Was it enough for whoever's doing this to care?"

"Those people weren't angels, and they weren't working for Hell either."

"As far as we know."

"Dean," Sam said, in what Dean liked to think of as his 'get a hold of yourself' tone of voice. "Did those people even seem like veteran hunters? I severely doubt they'd be anyone's vanguard, certainly not an angel's. They're hunters who lucked onto a demon's trail, that's it."

Dean nodded. "You're right," he lied. He didn't know if Sam was right or not, but that feeling was now wedged in his gut. That one that told him things were a bit more fucked than he could see at the moment. Dean would be the first to admit he tended towards paranoid, but that instinct was rarely wrong. He relied on it heavily when he was younger, to keep him and Sam alive and in one piece when they were stupid kids in a world so dangerous and far over their heads, they really shouldn't have survived it. Dad had encouraged that; he always told him to trust his gut instinct. " _If it feels wrong, it is wrong. Don't dismiss it."_ And this felt a billion different kinds of wrong.

Also, he couldn't get over "Sue" and her small caliber gun. That was for close up violence; otherwise, it was just a pop gun. If she wasn't intending to use it, maybe that made sense. But Dean could picture her putting a pillow over his sleeping face and shooting him in the head. Contained the mess, and the small caliber wouldn't make much noise at all. People in the next room - Sam in the next room - might not even hear it.

Maybe their seeming lameness was a feature, not a bug. They wanted to see what the response would be, how prepared they were for a sudden attack. They were the scouts. The army would be following shortly.

But Sam was correct about them working with an angel. Why would they? An angel would have no use for them. Neither would Crowley, unless he the ideas of a bunch of lame-os going after hard targets made him laugh, which ... oh shit, it totally would.

"What?" Sam asked.

Dean knew he had a good poker face, so he was probably too silent for too long. "We can't trust them."

For a moment he thought Sam would argue but ultimately he nodded. It usually was the Winchesters versus the world wasn't it? This wasn't new. "So how goes the big snake hunt?" Dean asked.

"I may have some idea what we're after." Sam headed to his bathroom for some reason. "A naga." Sam came out with a washcloth and wrapped it around Dean's cut fingers.

"A what now?"

"A naga. In Hinduism they're semi-divine beings, half-human, half-cobra."

Dean groaned. "Not gods again."

"No, technically demi-gods. They can present as either entirely human or entirely serpentine, so they're very limited shapeshifters in that sense. They're associated with rivers, lakes, all sorts of waterways, supposedly live underground, and traditionally guard treasure."

Dean considered that. "Like the Amulet of Dahou?"

Sam nodded. "That's what I was thinking. Now admittedly, my proof of this is pretty low, but I had a hunch -"

"Good enough for me," Dean interrupted. It really was. "How do we kill them?"

"Still working on that," Sam admitted. "They're extremely venomous, so engaging them in any sort of battle would be unwise."

"Blast them from a distance?"

"That might be the only thing on the table at the moment. And I'm not sure if they're the reason this town is suddenly monster free or not."

Dean really felt he'd missed something, but since he was sober, there was little chance he'd zoned out. "What?"

Sam frowned. "According to Jenny, the ghouls were the last ones here. Now that they're gone, there's just her, and possibly a naga."

Dean's stomach clenched. That wasn't good. "Know what else could scare off a whole town full of monsters? A pissed off angel."

"We have no reason to think that's a possibly. Don't jump -"

There was a knock on his door, and both he and Sam exchanged one of their looks. Could be anything; could be the motel manager come to ask why there was shooting in front of this room, and kick them out. Could be trouble of a more lethal variety.

While Dean got up to get the door, Sam took a position parallel, out of sight, and drew his gun. If it was big trouble, it'd be dead pretty quick.

Dean opened the door, and stood back, giving Sam ample room to target and fire. It wasn't the hunters, or anyone he recognized. It was a wizened older woman, a couple inches under five feet tall, with lank brown hair and limbs so slender they looked almost bird like. She was positively swimming in a t-shirt that said 'Party Naked' across the front, and was wearing hospital scrub pants that looked like they were eighteen sizes too big. "What up, green eyes? Is your turd hole brother here?"

Dean briefly wondered why someone's grandmother rolled up and started insulting Sam for no reason, and then he put it together. "Jenny?"

She patted Dean on the arm, and then squeezed him bicep before his dirty look made her let go. "I changed threads. So is he happy now?"

Dean looked back at Sam, whose expression was so sour, Dean might as well have been eating a bacon cheeseburger in front of him. "You told Jenny to change vessels?"

"To something emptier, yes."

"Well, this thing's as empty as a rave in an Amish barn," Jenny said, coming in. She hit her chest so hard Dean was afraid she was going to collapse her own ribcage. "These dipshits at a Catholic hospital have her on life support, and she's so dead it's not even funny. Soul's gone, brain's gone, body's atrophying, but they can keep her heart going artificially, so good enough. You humans are so fucked up. Oh, and I'm pretty sure I don't have as fearsome a presence in Birdbones Magillicuddy here, but that's on you."

Sam sighed, holstering his gun. Dean could tell he really wanted to shoot Jenny, but where would his reputation as the sane one be after that? "I didn't think you were here to be intimidating."

"No thanks to you guys."

"Did you talk to your friends or not?" Sam asked.

Jenny grimaced in a way that let Dean know something terrible was about to come out. "So, uh, funny story. From your personal history, I guess you're aware of Lucifer? I'm sure you know he led a failed rebellion in Heaven that ended with him caged in Hell. Well ... he wasn't alone." Dean couldn't help but notice Sam visibly tense. Frankly, he wasn't feeling very relaxed either. "Most of the angels that rebelled with him were killed, but Lucifer was able to rescue a couple. Not before their grace was taken from them, but before they were iced, and when Lucifer fell, he took them with him. And, well, one thing led to another, yada yada yada, and anyway, they became demons."

"You are not seriously yada yada-ing angels turning into demons," Dean snapped.

Jenny stared at him like he was the asshole. "As I was saying, some of Lucie's party pals became demons. And it turns out Countess was one of them?"

"What?" Dean exclaimed. Shit, Heaven _was_ after them.

"And you didn't know this how?" Sam demanded.

"There was no fucking way she was ever copping to be an angel in Hell. How long do you think she would have lasted down there? Angels are the enemy, whether they fought with Lucifer or not. Countess figured out, between the time Lucifer fell and was released from the cage, that being made a demon was more of a punishment than being dead, and wanted nothing to do with the apocalypse or anything. Which was why she chose the none of the above option, and avoided Hell's politics. Which leads us to here and now."

"Okay, but why now?" Dean asked. "Why is Heaven going after them? And that doesn't explain the death of the vessels."

Jenny shrugged. "I know it doesn't. I'm just telling you what I found out. My friend is an ex of Lucifer's and never told me. Think how I feel." She shuddered. "God, that close to a former angel all this time. Gives me the heebie jeebies."

Sam scrubbed a hand through his hair. "This doesn't actually help us in any way. If Countess is the only one who used to be an angel, why kill the rest of you?"

"Maybe Heaven doesn't want its dirty little secret getting out?" Dean suggested. "I didn't know angels could be turned into demons. Did you?"

"Lucifer?" Sam replied.

"Besides him, smartass. I didn't know the rank and file could get flipped."

"It's a surprise to me as well," Jenny said. "I thought those things could only be self-righteous tadpoles."

Dean didn't even know how to take that. Was it a joke? If it was, how was it funny?

Sam seemed to be caught between frustrated and despondent. "All we seem to be doing is banking more questions. What we need are answers."

Dean knew how he felt. He felt like kicking a few holes in the wall, but that wouldn't help. It wouldn't feel all that satisfying either, which would be the entire point of it.

Sam gave him another patented Winchester look, the famous 'fuck this" look, which would be the family crest, if an expression could function in that capacity. "So what do we do now?"

Sometimes it sucked being the older brother. (Sometimes?) Dean really wanted to cede his responsibilities to someone else at times, let someone else do the thinking, the heavy lifting, the human shielding. But you didn't get to pick sometimes - you got what you got. He just had to suck it up. "We have a case," he said with a shrug. "We work it. And we'll deal with a killer angel if it comes to that."

It wouldn't be the first time they'd done so. At least they had experience.

* * *

Sam did his best to ignore Jenny, but it was really difficult. Especially since she tagged along.

It added to the things he was trying to simultaneously ignore and figure out. Dean had had some kind of revelation at the motel. He thought he had a good poker face, and generally he did, but with Dean it was all in the eyes. It happened really fast, a there and gone sort of thing, but Sam had decades learning how to read his emotionally compartmentalizing brother, and had it down to a science now. He'd had it before Jenny arrived, so it had to be related to the hunters Dean had sent to the emergency room.

Considering he'd only gotten rid of the Mark of Cain recently, Sam knew that could have gone much worse. Yes, he hurt them, but under the influence of the Mark - or the demon that came after Dean died and the Mark fully took him over - those people would have been extremely dead by the time Sam arrived. They'd have been bloody smears on the pavement. Did they have any concept how lucky they were? Of course, the whole thing was stupid.

Related to Jenny's "case"? Sam was trying to figure that out. He couldn't figure out how human hunters could be related. Hell wouldn't need them, neither would Heaven. But would they account for all that weird ritual shit at the crime scenes of dead vessels? Unclear. Yet it would make more sense for a human to do it, rather than an angel or a demon. But what was the point? What was in it for them?

Questions within questions. But maybe that was the end goal - chaos. Who could figure this out? If you couldn't build a narrative, you couldn't find a person - or thing - to blame. While everyones sifting through contradictory clues, move on to your next target. It was actually genius, in a really evil way. Did that mean Hell was responsible? Although, to be fair, Heaven had shown itself capable of evil too. The most depressing thing Sam had ever discovered was nothing was immune from evil. Evil was as universally pervasive as stupidity. If he thought about it too long, he'd realize he and Dean were trying to empty an ocean with teaspoons, and he'd never want to get out of bed again. So he tried never to think about it too long.

Dean drove out to the old mansion while Sam did a little more naga research, and did his best to ignore Jenny, who was keeping up a reasonable amount of chatter in the backseat. Sam wasn't sure if she was using Dean, if she liked him, or a bit of both. The problem was, a demon liking you could go in many unsavory directions, which he knew all too well. What was her end goal with him? Was it related to him being a former demon vessel? It did occur to Sam that maybe Jenny ran to him in hopes that the killer, in pursuing her, might break off for the more savory target of a Winchester. Or maybe Dean would simply kill the angel, or Cas would. Demons usually had impeccable survival instincts.

There wasn't a lot on killing nagas that he could find - if they could be killed. He found conflicting information, and none of it was genuinely trustworthy. From what he could assemble, they were good, unless they were bad, or unless they thought you were trying to steal their treasure, or you had something they wanted, or maybe they were more like sirens than you thought. They were attractive; they were hideous. A lot of myth, not a lot of reliable lore. He might as well have printed the pages out and thrown darts at them blindfolded. The only thing that everybody agreed on was they were incredibly deadly, and most likely to be active in the really early morning or at night. Since it was about noon, it seemed like an ideal time to check the house and find the amulet.

They were going to do what they wanted to do the night they ran into the ghouls, which was attempt to use a locater spell to find the amulet. Since it was assumed to have magical protections on it, Sam was making the spell as vague as possible. That worked a shocking amount of the time, because people generally thought in the specific, especially with mystical artifacts.

Dean wanted to be prepared in case the naga wasn't sticking to the script, and he pulled a backpack out of the trunk, and loaded in a couple of Molotov cocktails, flares, a little holy oil - demi-gods, right? Might work - and one flash-bang. Sam wouldn't let Dean bring the grenade launcher, because while the tunnel may have been mystical in origin, there was no way to tell how stable it was, and bringing the entire thing down on their heads seemed like a self-defeating plan. Looking at their trunk, Jenny seemed genuinely shocked. "Holy shit. This is a rolling armory, and you never told me?"

"Why do you need to know?" Dean asked.

"I dunno. Could have been helpful in Belleville."

"We managed," Dean replied, closing the trunk. Sam was really going to have to ask him for the story again, because the first time he heard it, he assumed Dean made it up, and paid no attention.

"Maybe you should do the locater spell, since you're the former witch," Dean said, as they started walking towards the old mansion. It seemed even more decrepit and sad in broad daylight. Central casting for the murder house in a horror movie.

"Healer, jackass. I was a former healer," Jenny snapped. "Just 'cause I cast a few curses that made guys' balls shrivel up and drop off doesn't make me a witch."

Sam and Dean shared a wary glance before Dean looked back at Jenny. "You can do that?"

"Oh yeah. It was my favorite revenge method."

"Did they deserve it?"

"Every fucking one."

Dean nodded. "Fair enough."

Although it was extremely cringe-worthy, there was no denying that some men did indeed deserve to get their balls removed. Some deserved even worse. The world had no shortage of monsters, even of the human variety.

Once inside the crumbling ruin, which still reeked of ghoul blood, Sam did the locater spell, which was simple enough. It seemed to take longer to work than it should have, but he chalked that up to the power of the mystical wards on it. It seemed to indicate the amulet was in the basement, which was exactly what he and Dean were afraid of. Bracing for the rotted flesh smell, they went back down to the basement.

The first cue something was amiss was that it smelled slightly better in the basement. It shouldn't have, but Sam was midway down the rickety staircase when he noticed there were no bodies whatsoever.

Dean had killed, what, a dozen down here? There was still splashes of blood on the walls and the floor, tissue embedded in bullet holes in cinder-block walls, but otherwise it was remarkably clean. "Okay, what the hell?" Dean exclaimed."You think the ghouls came back for their dead?"

Sam shook his head. "They never have before."

"What do nagas eat?" Dean wondered.

Sam shrugged. More information he hadn't been able to dig up. But the thought of them eating corpses wasn't too reassuring.

"Holy motherfucker," Jenny said. "What the fucking fuck is that?"

That seemed like an excess amount of fucks in one sentence, but considering she just saw the tunnel for the first time, Sam thought it was understandable. "We think it's the hole the naga made between the surface and wherever it lives."

"You didn't say it was a fucking kaiju."

"Feel free to go back to the car," Dean said - no, encouraged.

"Oh hell naw. I wanna see how you normal people sized things expect to fight this. It'll be hilarious."

They both gave her evil looks for that, and she pointedly ignore them. Sam didn't bother to correct her, that they weren't here to fight, simply retrieve the amulet if at all possible, but she knew that too. She clearly enjoyed being a smart ass. No wonder she liked Dean.

If Sam was reading the way the pendulum swung correctly, it was indicating the amulet was inside the tunnel. Which, again, was a worse case scenario. But considering how their luck had been running, Sam expected no less.

Sam got out his flashlight, but Dean put on a dorky head lamp and turned it on, so while he had a gun in one hand, the other was free to retrieve a Molotov, a flare, or the flash-bang, whatever was needed. Jenny trailed behind them, probably using them as human shields.

The quiet was eerie, dark, and smelled even more like water now that the dead bodies were gone. Sam was pretty sure they reached the area they had last time, but the snake skin was gone too. Sam couldn't decide if that was a good sign or a bad one.

They were about fifty feet inside, the pendulum still indicating they had a ways to go, when Dean suddenly held a hand out in front of him. Sam looked at him curiously, but all Dean did was mouth the word "Listen," probably so it didn't echo.

Sam did, and he was about to shake his head to indicate he was getting nothing, when he heard ... something. It was faint, and possibly far up ahead, but it was like sliding gravel, or a small mudslide. A weird noise.

They exchanged a concerned look - did they press on? Did they retreat? Sam hadn't made up his mind when there was a much louder noise, a boom that made the ground tremble, and the subsequent sound was unmistakable: a roar of water.

Sam barely saw the wall of water rushing towards them before Dean grabbed him and turned away, and the water hit them as hard as a one ton truck.


	6. A Curse Worth Believing

_**6 - A Curse Worth Believing**_

Sam didn't know how long he'd been out. A few seconds, maybe. Couldn't have been long. It was amazing how well a shocking bath of cold water could bring you back to full consciousness.

Another thing about suddenly finding yourself in water - the need to figure out quickly which way was up. You'd assume you'd just float, but with currents and undertows, and little light to see by, you couldn't actually take that for granted. It was completely disorienting. Luckily - or sadly, however you wanted to look at it - he'd been through this before.

The water was murky dark, but this was a basement, which meant junk. Lots of light debris and rotted wood that was compelled to float. The currents would grab it, but couldn't hang on for long. That was how Sam figured out which way was up.

He broke the surface and gasped in a breath, trying to figure things out. Basically he was in an air pocket; there was maybe three inches of clearance between the water and the ceiling. It did occur to him the water could keep coming in and fill it to the top, except didn't Dean say he fell through the floor? There was a hole here somewhere. Just like an ice fishing hole, it would be a way out for them, assuming they found it before they ran out of air.

Sam scanned what he could see of the dark water, the surface churning and rippling like water was still pouring in from somewhere, and shouted, "Dean!" There was no other movement in the water, just scraps of what had probably been the staircase floating to the surface. Shit.

He took a deep breath and dropped back down, at least in control this time. It was still way too dark, and he wished he had his flashlight, but he lost that the moment the water hit. Filled with it, the basement now seemed vast, like a dirty indoor pool.

Jenny was probably a goner, right? Not the demon; she'd be fine. But her vessel was clearly a person who'd been bedridden for far too long; her arms and legs had been like branches with a thin layer of flesh stretched over them. The force of the water would have pulverized that vessel. Hell, he was lucky he wasn't dead.

Sam was sure he saw a shape in the deep dark, and swam towards it, only for it to move in an odd, sinewy way. It seemed to disappear, and Sam had to go back up to the surface for air. And when he did, he wondered if he actually saw what he thought saw, or if it was simply a trick of the (lack of) light.

It looked like a tail. A big, snaky tail.

In his mind, his thoughts were just _fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck_. If there was a naga in the water, they were dead, weren't they? Hell, all the water could be tainted with poison, and it might take several minutes of exposure before it killed them, paralyzing their lungs and causing convulsions. No, he couldn't worry about that now. For the moment, he had one mission: find Dean. The rest would have to take care of itself.

Sam went back down into the murk, aware that any patch of deeper dark could be the naga, waiting to kill him like a hungry shark. Finally he spotted a more or less still patch of darkness, clearly wearing a jacket.

He grabbed Dean, who was all dead weight, and pulled him up to the surface, into the patch of air that was now only two inches from the ceiling. Fuck. They needed to find that hole in the floor and get out of here.

"Dean, come on," he said, holding his brother's head above water. He was one hundred percent out cold. Sam's heart lurched as he thought he might be dead, but after all this, after that thing with Death and the Darkness, there was no fucking way he could be dead. Because Sam wasn't going to let him be dead, and leave him alone to deal with this mess.

He couldn't quite conquer his feeling they weren't alone here. He saw no obvious signs of the naga, but that didn't stop this creeping sensation down the back of his spine. Something was watching. And they were utterly helpless. It was almost cruel, toying with prey like this. He wished it would get it over with and attack already.

Sam then heard another strange noise. It was like a creak and a groan, but so deep he felt it more through the water than heard it. And when dust salted down from above, he realized it was the house, shifting under the great strain that the insane weight of all this water was causing. He wasn't sure if the house was going to collapse inward, and then the foundation would give way, or if the foundation would give in first.

It turned out to be one of the basement walls, which was not as completely underground as you would have thought. It split open, letting in light, as the ceiling started to collapse. Sam pulled Dean down into the water, trying to avoid the worst of the falling floorboards, and swam towards the light. The water spilled them out on the front lawn in a torrent. By some small miracle, they avoided being crushed by the first floor collapse.

Sam rolled onto his back, never so happy to see the sky, and coughed as he sat up. Was the water poison? Was there any way to tell? Did the naga follow them out? He looked around the now water logged, overgrown lawn, and saw nothing but water, still roiling out of the basement where the collapsed wall had been, and debris.

The house was now tilted precariously in their direction, but hadn't completed its implosion yet. Still, Sam grabbed Dean and dragged him to relative safety. Relative because, if the house decided to go like a chopped down pine, they'd still be in line to get hit.

What an ignominious hunter's death that would have been. Drowned in a basement. There were probably worse ways to die, but still, pretty ridiculous.

He turned Dean over on his side, and stripped off the backpack, which may have weighed him down in the water, and started hitting him on the back, trying to force water out of his lungs. He was about to give up and move on to step two when Dean coughed, and puked up water on the soggy lawn, moving with a pained groan. It was a better part of a minute before he could talk. "Son of a bitch," he gasped, grabbing his head.

That was about the size of it. Sam stood up, hefting the wet backpack, and saw something strange amongst the flotsam and jetsam spilled on the grass. He walked over to check it out, and realized it was an arm. Jenny's arm, considering how thin and frail it looked. Detached pretty much from the shoulder joint. He didn't see the rest of her anywhere. Sam didn't like it, but he supposed he couldn't blame Jenny for destroying this vessel. They didn't know they were going to get hit with an indoor tidal wave, and after seeing how atrophied the limbs and body were, it was undoubtedly empty. Perhaps the only good thing to come out of this was she didn't accidentally kill anyone who wasn't already on their way to death.

Sam peered inside the basement through the gap in the wall. There was still a good amount of water in there, but he couldn't see any more of Jenny's body, or the naga. Maybe he had imagined it. Dark water and a stressful situation made an ideal canvas for a hallucination.

"I hate to admit it," Sam said. "But I think we have to chalk this up as a win for the naga. There's no way we can get back in there in its current state." A stiff breeze might cause the rest of the house to collapse; it was no longer safe to venture inside. If the naga had the amulet, it was theirs to keep. Unless they could find another way into the tunnel, but they had no idea where it ended.

Dean groaned an affirmative. "If it's a threat, we have to take care of it before we go."

"If it's a threat. I'm not so sure it is." If it was in the water, it had to know he was there. It could have attacked him or Dean at any time, and they had nothing to fight back with. They were helpless, an easy meal. But it didn't move in for the kill. Again, if he hadn't imagined it.

Dean managed to shove himself up to a sitting position, but it seemed to cost him, and he winced and put his head in his hands. "Fuck. How's Jenny?"

"I think she was washed out of existence, pun partially intended. Too bad water doesn't kill demons." Sam crouched down in front of Dean, and said, "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Dean squinted at him, frowning sourly. He was using grumpy to hide pain, and it wasn't working. "I'm fine."

"Answer the question."

It took Dean a little too long. Sam could see he was having trouble focusing. "Three."

Sam put his two fingers down, and slipped his arm around Dean's shoulders and helping him up. "Okay, now it's our turn to stop by the E.R. ."

"Oh, come on," Dean protested, but very weakly. He seemed to have trouble staying on his feet.

"Like I don't know a concussion by now?" Sam was pretty sure he could fake his way through being a triage nurse if he absolutely had to. Dean probably could too. It was equally ridiculous how often they'd been hurt in their lives. They were a living catalog of exactly what it was like to live as a hunter. Every scar told a story, and they were all pretty bad.

He loaded Dean up in the car, in the passenger seat for once, and the fact that he didn't protest this in any way told you how bad he actually was. Sam got in the driver's seat, and wondered what story he'd tell the medical staff.

They were all going to find out, weren't they?

* * *

Sam told the medical personnel that Dean fell in a pool and accidentally hit his head, hence the whole soaking wet with a concussion thing, and they seemed to buy it. What other explanation could there be? That they were attacked with a wall of water by a naga in the basement of a creepy abandoned house?

Sam knew this meant they had to keep Dean overnight for observation, since head injuries were nothing to treat trivially, and while Dean hated it, Sam kind of thought maybe it was for the best. Part of him thought he should continue to search through the crime files, see if he could figure out who was killing off the vessels. The other part of him thought he should go back to the motel and lay a trap for the hunters, if they were indeed as suspicious as they seemed. Dean seemed to think so, and he had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And Dean wasn't the only demon vessel. Sam had been one too, although it seemed like a lifetime ago. Meg had possessed him for about a week. It probably didn't compare to Dean dying and being reborn as the vessel for the Mark of Cain, but it felt pretty dramatic at the time. Meg used him to murder a man, which had never quite left him. He didn't even know why she had done that, except to be cruel in that special way demons were.

Also, he was a vessel for Lucifer. Did that count as demon or archangel? Demonic archangel? It was funny that Lucifer was a gray area, but he was somehow. Leave it to Lucifer to be constantly a pain in his ass, even when he wasn't here.

Sam kind of hated leaving Dean here on his own, and wished Castiel was here, if only to split the duty. He could stay here and protect Dean, and Sam could see what he could do to circumvent any attack ... except there was one thing he'd overlooked.

After checking in on Dean to make sure he was doing as well as could be expected, Sam returned to the motel, to change into dry clothes, and call Cas.

This was the part Sam hadn't been looking forward to. He had to talk Cas through getting on Dean's computer back at the bunker, so Sam could send him copies of the crime scene photos, and the weird symbolism at play. While Dean did mind if Sam got on his computer, he doubted he'd mind Cas using it. And, to Cas's credit, he seemed to get it easier than most human things. It may have helped it was Dean's.

Sam kind of felt like Cas was the little brother he never had - the scary, lethal, and yet somehow awkward and goofy little brother. Cas had saved his life so many times he lost count, and he knew if he called on him, he'd be there. He also knew, without a single bit of doubt, that if Cas ever had to choose between him and Dean, he would pick Dean every time. From day one of meeting him, Dean and Cas had been pretty much a package deal. He wouldn't get in the middle of it even if he wanted to. In a way, it was kind of reassuring to know that, no matter what happened to Sam, Dean would always have someone. Dean had a tendency to tail spin when he was on his own. Not his fault; his whole identity seemed wrapped up in taking care of someone else. God forbid he took care of himself for once. The number Dad did on him. Jesus. This was part of the reason why he was always so mad at Dad, and Dean never got it.

This was also why he hadn't told Cas Dean was hurt. He'd want to come and help, despite the fact that he really wasn't in any shape to do so, not after what Rowena did to him, and his fellow angels did in turn. Castiel was another who really needed to concentrate more on himself at times.

Sam took the opportunity to ask if the angels falling with Lucifer and being turned into demons was true. "Yes, there were five of them," he replied, with a strange wistfulness. This was a nostalgia trip for Cas, as weird as that was to imagine. "Adnachiel, Eiael, Mendrion, Omael, and Zaazenach. It was a shame. I was surprised they didn't rise when Lucifer did, but they had been robbed of grace, so they were no more powerful than any other demon. And I imagined they'd had time to repent in leisure."

"Would Heaven be interested in killing them?"

"Hmm. I suppose it depends. They do exist as object lessons for disobedient angels, that there is something much worse than death. But there might be others who see them as an embarrassment who should be erased."

Sam knew it wasn't relevant, but Cas's tone of voice made him curious. "Did you know them?"

"Not really. I was part of the team that took down Mendrion. I knew of Eiael, but we'd never really talked. They were part of another garrison."

Sam so often thought of Cas as their strange friend, that to think of him as one of the asshole angels - which he had been for too long to count - was odd indeed. He probably felt that way too. "Would you know them if you encountered them again?"

"In demon form? I don't see how, unless they identified themselves to me. Without their grace ..."

"... they're just another demon."

"Yes."

"But doesn't that mean a fellow angel wouldn't be to recognize them?"

"Only if they didn't know their demon ... signature, for lack of a better term. I don't. Someone else might."

Sam heard the sound of new email hitting Dean's inbox, which meant Cas must have gotten the files Sam sent. "There's some symbolism in use here that looks a little familiar, but completely off," Sam explained. "I was hoping you might recognize it."

"I'll do my best," he said. "Oh, I decrypted those books in the library."

That caught Sam off guard. "Really? Which one?"

"All of them."

"All ..?" Sam paused. Okay, he didn't feel inadequate because an ancient energy being could translate books he never found the time to work with. He didn't. That would be ridiculous. He swallowed it back. "Anything interesting in them?"

"One of them seems to be consumed with the sexual fetishes of politicians who've been dead for over a hundred years," Cas said. "I don't understand what ..."

He didn't trail off in his normal, dismissive angel way. It sounded like something had snagged his attention. "Cas? What is it?"

"Nathanael."

"Who?"

Cas paused, and Sam got the sense he was trying of how best to put something. "He, umm ... how do I say this? During the war in Heaven, he kind of ... lost his mind, I guess, although he still has it of course."

Oh good. A crazy angel always made for good times. Sam pinched the bridge of his nose before continuing. "Do you know where he is?"

"No. I did try to find him, but he managed to hide himself well. I have heard rumors he's a religious leader somewhere in the Midwest, but I have no idea if that's true, or simply an assumption based on his nature."

There was so much to unpack. Where to start? "An assumption based on his nature? What does that mean?"

Cas paused again. Every time he did that, Sam's stomach clenched a little more. It was a solid fist in his gut. "He has always been ... militant is the best way to put it. He was obsessed with purity."

Oh no. "How does he define purity?"

"For example, this writing at the crime scenes? This is a proto-Enochian language he tried to promote as purer than Enochian, which is ridiculous, because a language can't be pure or impure. Unless it's the tongue of the Old Ones, and maybe you have an argument, because pronouncing one syllable incorrectly could drive you insane. To make it worse, whoever is writing this at the scene is very sloppy. It's like a copy of a copy. _'All the wicked should wander in my sight'_. The word they wanted was cower, but they did it wrong, and it reads more like wander." Another brief pause. "Or bake, if you turn it on its side."

"Wait. I thought you just said Nathanael was responsible for this."

"I think he is, in a roundabout fashion. He taught someone this language, although he did so poorly."

That opened up so many unpleasant possibilities. Sam looked at the crime scene photos again. "It's not the same message at every scene?"

"No. I think it's an attempt at an explanation, or perhaps a manifesto, like I found in that other encrypted book. _'Sinners cannot be allowed to live.' 'One tainted soul paints us all.'_ I'm sure that was supposed to be taints ... unless they were getting poetic. It would be out of character for him, but insanity effects us all in different ways."

This was getting better and better. A killer angel who was telling stories at his crime scenes? It was like a couple of different horror movies crashing together. Dean probably would have loved that part of it. "Does this sound like something Nathanael would say?"

"Absolutely. He was convinced those who were devout and truly pure couldn't be possessed by demons, but that wasn't how any of it worked. No one could ever convince him otherwise."

Sam reflected on what Cas said, and realized he had missed something. There was simply so much to process here. "Why did you say they a minute ago?"

"Because more than one person wrote the messages," Cas said, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world.

Sam studied the photos. He couldn't tell. He also couldn't tell if the message was upside down or sideways. Proto-Enochian had very little in common with the Enochian he was familiar with. "How many would you say did?"

"Maybe three? One's right handed, one's left handed, and the third is the worst speller of them all. In fact, some of their messages are senseless squiggles. ' _Purification is the only -_ ' and it 's unintelligible from there on. They also left two symbols out of purification."

The penny dropped for Sam, so loudly he was surprised Cas didn't hear it over the phone. "Could Nathanael be marking these specific demons and demon vessels for someone else to kill?"

"Absolutely. I'm surprised he's not doing it himself."

"But he's not the killer, is he?"

"Not directly. He was never one for using an angel blade. He preferred the use of what he called cleansing light."

Sam instantly called up all those angel victims with their eyes burned out of their skulls, and suppressed a shudder. That wasn't how the people in these photos were killed. They were stabbed or gutted, probably by an angel blade, but there was no exact way to tell that unless he got to look at the bodies directly. "Did you ever hear how big his congregation was?"

"No. But it couldn't have been very big, as I never found him."

"So, more like a cult?"

Another brief pause from Cas, but it brought no anxiety, because Sam's anxiety meter had already hit eleven. "I think that's an adequate definition, yes."

Human members of an angel cult. Ones who were either pretending to be hunters, or thought of themselves that way. Goddamn it!

And he'd left arguably one of humanity's bigger, proudest sinners alone and injured at a hospital.

Sam bolted to his feet, dropping the file on the table, and crossing the room to get his coat. They were humans, so he wouldn't need specialized weapons, but there were at least four of them, and who knew if they gave a shit about collateral damage? His mental loop of _fuck fuck fuck_ started playing again. "Cas, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to track down where Nathanael's purity cult is. Use whatever bunker resources you need. We have to put a stop to this sooner rather than later."

"Agreed. These people are the ones we know they've killed. They may have murdered others we're unaware of."

Exactly what Sam was afraid of. This could be the tip of the iceberg. "Thanks, Cas. Talk to you later." He dropped his phone in his pocket as he shrugged his jacket on, and checked his ammunition.

And he'd thought normal cults were bad enough.


	7. Plus 2 Charisma

_**7 - +2 Charisma**_

Concussions sucked. Which was obvious, sure, but they sucked even beyond the intense head pain and nausea and blurry vision. They sucked because the hospital would never give you any drugs for them.

It wasn't that Dean didn't understand they were serious and could be medically nightmarish and all that. He did. But he'd had enough concussions in his life that he was kind of surprised he had any brains left to scramble. They should have oozed out of his ears like a pulverized gray mush years ago. And if they weren't going to give him anything for the pain, was a beer too much to ask for?

Apparently. But on the plus side, he was able to charm nurse Julio into sneaking him a little something, and now he felt half way to great. Okay, maybe great was an overstatement. Good-ish.

Basically it had gone from his head feeling like a molten death ball that was trying to kill him from the inside out to his head feeling mildly achy, but more like it was pumped a little too full of helium, but not so much it would pop. Improvement! Kinda. He'd take it.

Standing up was still unexpected adventure. He needed to take a minute, maybe two, to steady, but once he got his sea legs, he managed. Dean told himself to imagine he was a pirate, and he started to wonder if he'd look good with an eye patch, and giggled. Okay, yeah, drugs and head injuries were a terrible mix, and he should really go back to bed, but he was getting out of here. He knew Sam would object, but fuck it. There was some crazy stuff going on, and he needed to be out there, fighting it. With an eye patch! And a cutlass. Not the car, the sword thing ...

Fuck. He was really wasted. Julio gave him some good shit! He was going to do nothing but flirt with male nurses from now on.

Dean was unfamiliar with the hospital, but they were all generally the same. He knew he shouldn't just be wandering around, where an uncool nurse could demand he go back to his room, so he did his best to be nonchalant and inconspicuous, and not giggle or constantly hang on to the walls. There was a commotion in the E.R. though, sounded like a multi-car pile up or something like that, so attention was being pulled away.

Dean followed colored tape on the walls until he hit a staff only area, and he sauntered in, not sure what he would do or say if he ran into actual staff. He got lucky, though, and no one was there.

He got double lucky, as the second locker he broke into had sweatpants and a t-shirt that fit him. Okay, the t-shirt was a little tight, but hey, good enough. Now he looked like an actual person, and not an escapee from the paper gown wearing flasher department.

Dean needed to stop and take a moment so he would stop giggling. This was getting really embarrassing. But that thought was so funny, it made him laugh harder. Okay, seriously, he needed to calm down. It was starting to make his head hurt.

Dean made himself take deep breaths - well, semi-deep, since the shirt gave him lots of room in the stomach department but almost none in the chest - and finally calmed down. His head was still hurting, but the drugs were giving him a distance on it, and made it seem manageable.

Trying to keep from laughing, and thinking about being a pirate, Dean tried to remember how he ended up here. He remembered puking up water on wet grass, with his head feeling like it had been used in an entire baseball game, one that went for a couple extra innings. There was something ... the naga? Oh, water. Like a fucking wall of water, hitting with the force of a semi going a hundred on a sharp decline. It hit so hard he was beyond pain - there was a millisecond of memory, of pressure, like he was absorbing the force of an explosion. Holy shit, how did they live through that? No wonder his head felt like it had been used in a boxing gym for the last couple of months. Lucky to still be sucking air - the title of the Dean Winchester story. He let himself have a little giggle, and moved on.

It was only when he was out in the hall, following the tape lines, that it occurred to him he wasn't sure where he was going. Okay, he needed to focus, really screw on his helium filled head - ha! He could picture it floating towards the ceiling, bobbing on a string. He needed to get out of here. Get outside. Towards the front ... desk. Right. Okay. He had a plan. Great. Now he just had to keep from floating away in the meantime.

Dean was fairly certain he was getting close, when he turned a corner, and found a guy standing there. He looked kind of familiar, but Dean couldn't immediately place him. He had his arm in a sling, and a sour look on his face. "Oh, you're the motel dude," Dean said, finally recognizing him. "Don? John?"

"Vaughn," he snapped.

"Sure. Sorry I dislocated your shoulder, but you don't come at a hunter with a gun. That's maniac territory. I could have shot you."

"Wouldn't have been your first murder, would it?"

That threw Dean for a loop. "No. I've done some shit, and I ain't proud of all of it. But if you're attacking me, son, that's self-defense."

Vaughn started walking towards him, and Dean was definitely getting an off feeling from this guy. If he was angry at him, he'd get it, but it wasn't anger exactly. It was plain old hate, devoid of rage, which was super weird. He started backing up, not sure what was going on.

Dean saw him reach into his coat pocket, and expected him to pull out his gun, but instead, Vaughn pulled out a hypodermic needle. "You're supposed to be dead, Winchester. Your brother too. You realize, all the bad shit that's happening, it's all on you? You fucked up the universe."

Dean actually couldn't argue with that. He probably had. When Dean Winchester failed, he failed huge. Like, can be spotted from space huge. But he still didn't understand this conversation. He was missing something. It could have been the concussion and the drugs - hell, of course it was - but there was something else going on. "What's the needle for?"

Vaughn sneered. "Don't you want the pain to go away? A heavy conscience must hurt a lot, considering your whoring and boozing. You do indulge your vices, don't you?"

"Who doesn't?" Why was he saying that like a bad thing? "Come on, dude, it's not cool to slut shame."

Vaugh paused, clearly puzzled. "What?"

"Slut shame. Not cool. I mean, I'm good with my choice. Why should you care?"

Yep, Vaughn was totally lost. "Are you saying you're a slut?"

"Yeah. Aren't you?"

He considered that, off his game a little. Which was what Dean had been trying to do. "Men aren't sluts."

"Sure they are," he said, and punched Vaughn in his slinged shoulder. "Don't be a sexist pig."

Vaughn screamed and reeled back, dropping the needle as he stumbled into the opposite wall, grabbing his shoulder and sobbing.

"Didn't go for the pain meds? Dude, why? That's crazy. Dislocated shoulders hurt. And I should know, 'cause I think I can dislocate mine at will now. Still hurts." Dean picked up the needle, and had a head rush of massive proportions. He had to lean against the wall as it felt like liquid was sloshing around inside his skull. Arr, he was a pirate, on the seven seas of his own head.

Vaughn shoved himself off the opposite wall, still crying from pain, and slammed into Dean, pinning him against the wall, and his head briefly reeled, almost whiting out his vision for a second. But it cleared, and he saw Vaughn was staring at him in a funny way. Why? What kind of fight was this? Had he changed his mind and was he going to kiss him?

Dean finally realized he was holding something. Oh right, the needle. The needle now buried in Vaughn's chest. "This plan was worse than the one at the motel," Dean said, as Vaughn slid bonelessly to the floor, taking the now empty needle with him.

He hoped it was good shit, it would make Vaughn's shoulder feel better ... but Dean knew, deep down, if there were painkillers in that needle, it was a lethal dose. He could get being mad at him, but trying to kill him? Why? That made no sense.

Much like garroting a demon. Senseless. Perfect for getting a human, though.

Dean turned and started walking back. At least Vaughn was in a hospital. If he could be helped, they'd do it. But this was bananas.

Okay, he had to call Sammy and tell him he was right, these assholes were up to something weird. He patted his pants pockets until he remembered these weren't his pants. Right, okay, where were his clothes? He remembered they were wet, and kind of smelled like a combination of mildew, ghoul's blood, and mud. Were they thrown away? They must have been. What about his phone? He recalled that feeling of pressure, that force that seemed to rip the consciousness right out of his body, and realized his phone probably hadn't survived that. Fuck.

Dean had unwittingly backtracked to the staff room, but that was okay, because maybe someone had a phone in their locker. The first one he found was locked with a password, so no good, but the second one was usable. Low battery, but you couldn't have everything. He punched in Sam's number, but he didn't answer until the fourth ring. "Who's this?"

"Sammy, it's me. You gotta get here. I think those weirdoes from the motel are after me."

"Dean! Shit, they are. You need to get out of there, or at least get somewhere really public. They're the killers. They're part of some weird angel cult."

"Weird angel cult?" That would have been a decent band a Blue Oyster Cult cover band.

"Yeah, I'll explain later. Meet me in the lobby. I'm on my way. Don't f -"

The call dropped off, and Dean checked the phone, only to find it was stone dead. Wow, this thing had a really shitty battery. He wiped off his prints with his weird shirt and tossed it back inside the locker before elbowing it shut. You'd think doctors would be able to afford better phones.

Dean heard someone enter the locker room, and did his best to retreat farther in, and stay one step ahead of the nurse or doctor about to bust him. His suspicion that this wasn't staff was confirmed when a woman's voice said, "Winchester, you are so predictable. Breaking out of a hospital? Head to a staff room. I will give you credit, though. Last time I had a concussion, I couldn't stand for at least a day."

Sue. Shit. Did he respond and let her know where he was, or did he remain silent, and try and surprise her? Dean looked around, but he was in a small aisle made of lockers on either side, dead ending in a bathroom that he quickly glanced into, but wouldn't be a great area for a fight. No weapons either. He did consider breaking into more of these yellow colored lockers to see if he could find anything he could improvise into a weapon, but that was ridiculous. If this was a surgical suite, he'd have his choice of great weapons, but this wasn't, so he didn't. Shit!

There was only one entrance to this aisle, so Dean flattened himself against the lockers and waited for her to come. She'd fallen silent, so he could hear her footsteps and nothing else. Dean felt his head wanting to float away again, and he had to focus so hard it kind of hurt, but that was okay, because right now, the dull pain in the middle of his forehead was grounding. Again, get out of his own way. He could fight completely on autopilot now. That was perhaps the one good thing about post-traumatic stress disorder, if you could consider it even remotely good.

As soon as she stepped up to the corner, he threw out an arm, and she caught it. Which is what he expected her to do. He followed by turning out into her path and kicking her in the knee. Not hard enough to break it - hopefully - but hard enough to make her stumble back, and release his arm.

She was fast and good, though, an followed up quickly with a punch aimed at his head - wow, low blow! - which he just barely ducked, and she tried to embellish with a kick, but he Dean met her kick with one of his own and blocked her.

Clearly the men had fucked up at the motel by not letting her go first, because Sue was a bad ass. She kept pressing her advantage, moving forward, throwing combination lefts and rights, mostly aimed at his head, the glaring weak spot that would give her an immediate advantage. Dean managed to get his arms up to block the punches, but while he was on defense, his offensive attack was limited. For a second, he considered going for the headbutt, but then he remembered he had a concussion, and he would get the worst of that.

She changed up her attack and managed to punch Dean in the stomach, while he got in a kick on the side of her leg that made her crash hard into the lockers, and allowed him to back up more, putting some distance between them. "What the fuck's your problem with me?" he asked. Getting her talking might put her off her game, and this woman had game. Holy fuck - she was starting to remind him of the deaf girl with the hammer in The Raid 2, and that wasn't a chick he wanted to fuck with.

"You're the most impure freak on the planet, Winchester," she sneered. She flipped a knife out of her coat pocket, a solid black KABAR, and caught it by the handle. A real badass move he would have appreciated if she wasn't aiming to kill him with it. At least it wasn't a hammer, right? "The Mark of Cain should have destroyed you. No normal human could wear that and come out the other side. Somehow you did. You must be more evil than any of us can imagine."

"I died. If that wasn't being destroyed, I don't know what is." Impure was an odd word to use, wasn't it? What was that about? First slut shaming, and now impure used as an insult - was this a sex thing?

She shook her head, still eying him like the most putrid piece of shit she had ever come across. "It wasn't the Mark that killed you, monster." She threw a punch at his head on the left, and attempted to stab him on the right. Again, Sue was worryingly good at this.

Dean dodged the punch thrown at his head, and grabbed the wrist holding the knife, and twisted. He had no real hope of being her in a straight fight, not with a head injury and the dire threat of his concentration floating away, so he was going to have to go dark side here.

She screamed and dropped the knife, but managed to kick him in the upper thigh, sending him stumbling back. That was distressingly close to his junk, but thank god for drugs, because it didn't seem that bad. "You fucking bastard," she snarled. "I guess we're gonna hafta be noisy now." Sue reached into her pocket, and Dean was certain she was going for her Beretta. Shit.

He was preparing to tackle her, grab the weapon before she can use it, when a tall, bald man in surgical scrubs appeared at the head of the aisle. "Who the hell are you people? What are you doing in here?"

Holy shit - Dean hadn't even heard him come in.

Sue pivoted towards him, and before Dean could move, she had punched him flushed in the face. It didn't knock him out, it threw him against the lockers, so she grabbed his head and rammed it so hard she left a dent in the door. Now he was out, and collapsed to a heap on the floor.

That was Dean's absolute last straw. Why the fuck would you assault a civilian? Dean moved as fast as he could, ignoring the head rush that made his vision get even fuzzier.

He charged towards her, scooping the KABAR off the floor, and when he got to her, she was already turning to face him. But she didn't move fast enough to avoid him slamming the butt of the knife hard against her temple. She crashed into the lockers before dropping to the floor, unconscious.

Dean had to lean against the lockers until his vision cleared, and now the dull ache in his head was a throb. He'd pushed it too far. He really couldn't fight in this condition, and he was a million kinds of goddamn lucky that Sue hadn't killed him. They weren't all as lame as Vaughn, and he had to take that as an object lesson. Tate and Dmitri didn't look like much, but they were clearly more lethal than he guessed. And this was assuming the army hadn't arrived to back up the scouts. There could be more of them this time. Shit.

Sam was right. He needed to go to the lobby and hang out. They couldn't have been so brazen as to attack him in front of several witnesses, and a security guard or two.

When he felt he could manage it, Dean crouched down - leaning was out of the question, at least until tidal waves stopped in his head - and pulled her gun out of her pocket. He opened it, emptying the bullets, because there was no call for opening fire in a fucking hospital, but he put the gun in his pocket. Empty or not, it was still a decent bludgeon, if it came to that.

He stood up, and tucked the KABAR in his waistband, covering it with his shirt. Okay, he had weapons, so he wasn't naked anymore. Good. Maybe this whole shitshow was manageable and almost over. He just had to hold out until Sam showed up. Doable, right?

It was that exact moment that the lights went out.


	8. Bad As Me

**_8 - Bad As Me_**

Dean entertained a couple of possibilities. He was blind, because he was fighting with a concussion and on drugs, and something in his brain said ' _fuck this_ ' and threw a switch. He honestly wouldn't have blamed it at all. He deserved worse.

But then he sort of could see his hands in front of his face, and there seemed to be an increase in announcements in the hospital, and he figured no, it was a thing that happened to the entire building. He stumbled out of the room, and into the corridor, where emergency lights gave some dim illumination in the hall.

This was coincidence, right? There's no way it could be about him. What kind of maniacs would cut power to entire hospital to get to him? No, that would be crazy. They wouldn't endanger so many civilians to get him. Would they?

But Sue just attacked a civilian. Hell yeah, they would. Clearly they didn't care about collateral damage. Some religion they had there.

Murdering him he kind of got - he felt, at this point, he was fair game. If someone wanted to take a shot, they could. He'd done some bad shit, and if karma existed as more than a loose concept, he should expect it. But endangering so many people who had nothing to do with this was a special kind of evil.

Darkness added a level of peril Dean hadn't expected. His first step left him reeling, and he thought the emergency light he was looking at was moving, except it wasn't. He leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and tried to settle the swirling in his head.

Again, concentrating hurt, and he would swear the spinning in his head was making it hurt worse, and then his brain started recalling Tom Waits' songs, which ... why? But it was actually helping. His raspy voice was strangely comforting, and it kind of steadied him.

When he thought he could, Dean started walking down the hall, one hand on the wall, in case he started losing his balance again. A couple people walked by, and while they looked like they belonged, he watched them, and put his back to the wall, so they couldn't get him from behind. Fuck. He was going to have to treat everyone as a suspect until he knew they weren't. This was going to be impossible.

 _'Warriors, come out and play-ay,'_ drifted up from the dregs of his mind, and he snickered. It was a little bit like The Warriors, right? Except instead of facing gangs on the way back from Central Park, he was facing homicidal religious nuts on the way to the lobby. He laughed again, and wondered why all this shit was tumbling out now. Okay, for one, he'd watched too many movies in his life. And two, this could very well be a sign that something had jolted loose in his brain, and he was about to face a fatal bleed any second. Wouldn't surprise him.

There was a deep hum, and back up generators must have kicked on. Had the black out done them any good at all? What was the point?

Maybe twenty seconds later, the hum wavered and died. Okay, they sabotaged the generator too. Total dick move, and endangering as well. Who needed demons with humans like this?

After a minute or two, Dean was pretty proud of himself. Hadn't barfed, fallen down, or laughed for a little bit - okay, time no longer had any meaning for him, so he had no idea how much had elapsed - so he was doing all right. If you didn't know he was high as fuck and suffering a head injury, you might not guess it. He accepted that as a little victory.

Dean had to get away from the walls a bit, as the hallway he was going down had lots of open doors, but it sounded pretty quiet, and one he looked in was empty. He thought he heard somebody talking about evacuation. Had they removed these patients? Maybe they needed life support or something electronic.

Fucking dickholes. Again, coming after him? Fine. But why get so many innocent people on the way? Who taught them to be hunters? They sucked.

He was moving carefully past another open door when someone lunged out, put a plastic bag over his head, and yanked him inside.

* * *

There were times when Sam was sure the universe was sending him a clear message. For instance, right now, it seemed to be sending him a message that Dean was out of reach. So, fuck the universe then.

First, there was a massive car accident on the freeway, which slowed up everything, although it was hard to classify a random act of such misfortune as a message from the universe. It was a tragedy, and that was it. Okay.

Then the Impala seemed to be low on gas, which was weird, and totally out of character for Dean, who usually didn't let the tank get anywhere close to empty. But Sam had had the car as of late, so maybe this was partially on him. He didn't want to stop, but he had to.

He stopped at a station that was strangely empty, except for a truck idling empty in the spot nearest the station. A bad feeling drew Sam to the mini-mart inside, and he arrived in time to see a guy pull a bandanna over his mouth and produce a small caliber gun, which he aimed at the clerk. He demanded money with a racial slur, which was gratuitous assholery.

Dean probably would have decked the bastard, because Dean liked showing off how he could usually take someone down with one punch, but Sam preferred less showy, less risky maneuvers. Years of being a hunter had taught him to quietly sneak up on things, and since he had almost a foot of height on the robber, it was no big deal for Sam to just pluck the gun right out of his hand.

There was an almost comical pause as the robber had not anticipated anyone grabbing his weapon like that, and by the time he'd turned, Sam had opened the gun and emptied the bullets on the floor. "There's security cameras everywhere," he told the robber, who was also wearing sunglasses. Most of his face was covered, but Sam could still see zits that marked him as maybe twenty. "You probably won't even get home before the cops nail you. Do something better with your life, huh?"

The robber took a step forward, and Sam glared at him. "Really? I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to. I suggest you leave while you still can."

"The cops are on the way," the clerk said. "I pressed the button."

That was enough for the robber, who ran out the door, hopping into his truck and driving away. Sam subtly used his shirt to wipe his prints off the gun, and gave it to the clerk. "Need his license plate, or did the cameras get it?"

"Uh, I'm sure the cameras got it. Who the hell are you?"

"Nobody," Sam replied, leaving the store. He still had gas to get.

As it was, the clerk didn't charge him for the gas, so that was good, but Sam barely got out of there before the cops showed up. All he needed was to get sucked in as a witness to an aborted robbery that wouldn't add up to much of anything. He honestly hoped the robber took his advice to heart and did something more constructive with his life. But who knew? Maybe he'd come back and try his luck tomorrow with a different clerk.

All of this ate up more time than it should have. At least he talked to Dean, although not for nearly long enough. He sounded weird on the phone, didn't he? Sam was expecting pained, since he had a concussion, but he didn't sound pained at all. He sounded ... well, to be honest, Sam's first thought was he sounded drunk. That had to be the head injury, right? First of all, Sam had taken Dean's jacket, which was a sopping wet mess in the trunk, because he knew the doctors would probably be really suspicious of the sheer amount of weapons in it. (He also had to take the emergency knife off Dean's leg, and the small emergency gun in his boot, both of which somehow survived the deluge. His main emergency gun did not. And it did worry him that he knew Dean had these, knew where they were, and had somehow become accustomed to this.) Which meant Sam had his flask, and even so, there was never enough alcohol in it to get Dean drunk. Dean had a Viking level tolerance for alcohol, because he was most likely a functional alcoholic, which Dean would cop to. But Sam couldn't blame him for that. Alcoholism was a disease, but it was also Dean's main coping mechanism.

Sam felt lucky. He didn't feel like he had to be restrained to a certain box; he could be who he wanted, when he wanted, and he could express his feelings fine, because he didn't have some phantom version of Dad telling him to "man up" and "follow orders" and "do your job". Dad had tried to mold him into the "perfect soldier" thing, but Sam bristled at it, fought back against it , and after he left the family, he was absolutely furious that Dean was so fucking weak that he couldn't push back against Dad. With the gift of hindsight, he now realized the shit between him and Dad would have been a lot nastier and rougher if Dean hadn't always been there to run interference, to deflect Dad and to calm Sam down. He got to be what he wanted to be because Dean was the perfect soldier, basically. As long as Dad had one, he was happy. Well, okay, not happy, but ... willing to settle.

God, the guilt of that was monstrous. Dean obliterated his life so Sam could have a chance at one. How could you do that to someone? But better yet, how could a father ask that of his kids? He knew Dad had the best of intentions, and he wanted to save Sam from Azazel - again, he got that now. And he forgave his Dad, who was doing the best he could under circumstances that were bizarre at best, and an unending waking nightmare at worst. Yet it still skirted the edge of abuse, and many of his decisions were hard to justify with the benefit of hindsight. And it left him and Dean with this weird relationship, where Dean was almost more of a Dad to him than their actual Dad, while still also being his brother, and they had these strange weights of past and emotional ties so tangled they were a net impossible to escape from. They were two soldiers who had never left their foxhole, and probably never would. They were both messes; they both had PTSD from various things - Dean's biggest one was probably being tortured/torturing in Hell, with a minor in killing his way out of Purgatory; Sam's was all from being locked in a cage with Lucifer and Michael - and there wouldn't be enough therapy in the world for them, if therapy for hunters even existed. Which it should, because whoever opened that practice would clear a million a month, easily. But Sam still felt lucky. He figured out ways to cope that weren't self-destructive. It helped that he had his books, which were always a comfort to him. Facts on a page, or fiction on a page. Black and white. Real, tangible, something to hold onto. Hopes that maybe, in the end, this would all mean something. That the world could be saved and they had finally ended the major threats against it.

Dean simply had his addictions, his methods of slow suicide. Cas had helped a little, and still did, but it was never that simple. Life outside the foxhole seemed unimaginable to Dean, and yet, he couldn't keep living in it either. That was one emotion that Sam repressed - how much he worried about his brother. The fact that Dean was basically eager to throw his life away was not an accident, and yet Sam knew he couldn't really get Dean to admit that some part of him was so self-loathing he wanted to die. So they both pretended it wasn't true, and Dean drank himself numb, and Sam had to worry that, one day, Dean would snap and put his gun to his head and be done with it. Part of him couldn't believe he ever would; part of him could picture him doing it, like he'd done it a thousand times before. The Mark of Cain was Dean's latest attempt at self-obliteration, one that worked, until Sam put a stop to it. Sometimes he wanted to grab Dean by his stupid head and repeatedly smash it into the wall, all the while yelling, "Quit trying to die on me you stupid asshole!" Except it would probably kill him, so that was self-defeating.

And now the Mark, although gone, was having the last laugh in the form of The Darkness. It wasn't winning, although Sam was at a loss as to how to stop it right now. He'd figure it out. He had to - there wasn't a choice in the matter. Beat it or die trying.

When he finally reached the hospital, something was happening. It looked like they were evacuating patients. It also made the parking lot pretty inaccessible, which, again, made Sam want to give a finger to the universe. But he was here, and goddamn it, he was going to shoot every one of those crazy motherfuckers in the head if he had to, but they weren't getting Dean. Not now, not ever.

He was walking through the lot when he heard what sounded like a woman crying. Sam knew he had wasted too much time getting here, but he glanced over, and saw a woman who appeared to be on one knee on the ground, crying. She had long black hair covering her face, and was wearing the kind of boots that made Sam think she was probably into Goth. Sam knew he should go on, but he also knew he was too well drilled to walk away from someone in obvious distress. Apparently today was his day to play hero.

"Ma'am? Are you all right?" he asked, approaching her cautiously.

She sniffed, and appeared to be wiping her face. "No."

Sam heard a car door open behind him, and he had a sudden, very bad feeling he had walked into a trap.

He looked behind him, and saw nothing, but when he turned back around, it was barely in time to avoid an angel blade that snagged his shirt and tore a slash into it. The woman was on her feet now. She was younger than he thought, barely early twenties, and her face was wet with tears, but her lips were curled into a rabid dog sneer. While Sam had jumped back, she advanced, now trying to stab him with the angel blade. "Just fucking die already, you piece of shit," she snapped.

As she brought the blade down, he grabbed her arm and kicked her in the stomach, sending her flying back and ripping the angel blade from her hand. But Sam had hardly done that before something hard hit him on the back of the head. Not hard enough to knock him out, but hard enough to make him stumble and see stars, and the blade dropped from his hand. He had the presence of mind to kick the blade under a car. If he couldn't have it, no one could have it.

Sam turned and blocked a descending crowbar with his forearm. It was wielded by that kid from the motel. What had Dean said his name was - Tate? Sam grabbed the crowbar with his free hand, and wrested it away from the kid, who still lacked a bit in upper body strength - and hey, hadn't Dean broken a rib or two? That was always draining. Sam knew he shouldn't, but he turned the crowbar on the kid, slamming him right in the chest. Tate grabbed his already cracked ribs and crumpled to the ground.

Before Sam could press the advantage, the woman had recovered and jumped on his back like a complete fucking lunatic, throwing random punches in his face while trying to lock her other arm around his neck in a blood choke.

She nailed him pretty good in the nose before he tossed her off his back, and onto and over another parked car, and by that time the third man appeared, and Sam heard the cocking of a gun before he saw it. "How many civvies do you want to die here, Winchester?" the man said. Startled, Sam looked around.

The man, who Sam had never seen before, had his arm around the neck of a terrified woman in nurse's scrubs, and he had a gun pressed point blank to her temple. Her fear and tears looked genuine, as did the flat hatred in the man's eyes. "Stop fighting and be a good boy, or she dies first."

Fuck! What was he supposed to do now? He was too far away for Sam to try anything, and he would never reach him before he could pull the trigger. And he had no doubt he would do it too. Sometimes you could identify evil on sight, and this man was it. "Let her go, and I'll go with you," he said. All he needed was to get the nurse clear. Then he could make this asshole eat his own gun.

"No," he replied flatly. "My gun, my rules." He looked like the manager of a tire store. He was in his mid-thirties, balding, with a little spare tire around his middle, but much of it looked like hard fat, the kind some habitual brawlers got when they had a body type that didn't conform to lean. He had a cauliflower ear, and Sam could see callouses on his knuckles. He was no stranger to fighting, and was probably pretty good at it.

"I'm not doing anything if you're threating a civilian's life," Sam snapped. Could he sneak a hand in his pocket? He didn't want to shoot him first, but that might be his best option here.

"Fine, be that way," he said, and suddenly turned the gun away from the nurse, and straight at Sam.

Before he could drop and avoid the shot, the man's right eyeball seemed to explode outward in a small but startling burst of gore. It was a millisecond before Sam saw the glint of sunlight off metal, and realized his eye didn't explode, he'd simply had the angel blade rammed through his skull.

The nurse scrambled away, looking horrified, as evil tire store manager dropped to the asphalt. Standing behind him was the Goth girl, still holding the bloody angel blade, and smiling, as her eyes turned as black as her lipstick.

"Miss me, Stretch?" Jenny asked.


	9. I Am Godzilla, You Are Japan

_**9 - I Am Godzilla, You Are Japan**_

Sadly, this was not the first time somebody had plastic bagged Dean. It was super effective at rendering someone unconscious pretty quickly, so he knew why it was used.

He also knew to hold his breath for as long as he could. The second he inhaled, he'd get plastic, and suffocation followed soon after. His head swam, and his vision threatened to white out since this fucking bastard basically grabbed him by the head. But what he did was instantly go back with his would be captor, which he didn't expect. He'd prepared for resistance, so Dean pushing back threw him off, and they both stumbled into a wall. That was when Dean started throwing the hardest elbows of his life. Sure, he could break his own elbow, but this was a full red alert moment - either get free or get captured. Free and injured was better than captured and momentarily whole.

He heard grunts and cracks - unsure if the bones he was breaking were his, his captor's, or both - and when he felt hot liquid spray on him, he knew he'd broken a nose. The guy finally loosened his grip, and Dean broke away and ripped the bag off his head, inhaling a desperate breath. He wasn't sure he was going to make it. Suffocation was the fucking worst.

A second man was on him then, kicking him in the gut, sending him stumbling across the room. Dean hit a bed, and it slammed painfully into his back, but the shock of pain somewhere other than his head was kind of nice.

The man threw a punch at his head, which he ducked, and Dean attempted to kick him in the gut, but he missed, and nailed him square in the balls. Honestly, it was a better shot, as he doubled over instantly, and that's when Dean wrapped the plastic bag around his head, to see how he fucking liked it.

The man with the broken nose came at him then, and while blood was still streaming down his face like a dam had burst, Dean noted he had an angel blade. Okay, yeah, weird angel cult confirmed. There weren't a ton of those floating around, although, considering how many angels had died on Earth, you'd think there would be. He was going to have to ask Cas about that sometime.

He shoved the nut shot guy into the man with the angel blade, and belated realized Mr. Nosebleed was Dmitri. Okay, that meant only Tate was left to encounter. Maybe that was good?

Except there was a third person in the room, which he didn't realize until someone punched him in the back of the head.

Dean blacked out. For how long he had no idea. But he came to in fragments, the pulsing throb in his head pushing him back to consciousness while he dug in his heels, trying to avoid waking to so much pain.

He heard voices, all male, but couldn't actually make out their words. There were three, but then there were six. Now a woman joined them.

He was laying down on something hard, but not as hard as it could have been. The bed, not the floor. He felt a brief, sharp pain, and smelled blood, and was aware his ankles were being taped down. They taped down his left hand, which was enough to make him stop digging in his heels and wake up. Now they were taping down his right hand. Dean could sense body heat, and he decided to go for it. He punched blindly, hitting someone, and opened his eyes as he sat up , and the subsequent head rush almost made him black out again. Someone grabbed him by the hair from behind, and put a knife to his throat. "Don't make me punch you in the head again, Winchester," a man snarled in his ear. Dean considered a backwards headbutt, but again, he would get the worst of that.

It was a dark room - if there was a window, it must have blackout curtains on it - but Dean's eyes were accustomed to it, and he saw two people, the woman, and a man he didn't recognize, drawing weird symbols on the wall in blood. Those symbols that were in the crime scene photos. Wonderful. He glanced down, and saw they had made a vertical cut across his wrist, which was bleeding impressively, although it wasn't arterial. It was just a showy amount, and probably an adequate supply of ink. "You couldn't even use your own blood?" Dean snapped. "Lazy asses."

Dmitri, observing the painting, turned and scowled at Dean. "How are you not dead yet?" He had a beard of dried blood on his face now, and fresh blood was still leaking from the swollen ruin of his nose. The way his chin was swelling in a lopsided manner, Dean figured he'd also broke his cheekbone. Good.

"Uh, I think we killed him," he admitted. Not that the death of Death seemed to keep people from dying. That was a puzzler.

Dmitri looked just as baffled, and belatedly Dean realized his answer didn't make sense. Oh well. Considering how many shots to the head he'd taken today, any coherence was a luxury.

"What does that even say?" Dean asked. "I mean, if you're gonna ritually sacrifice me, I deserve answers."

"We're purifying your diseased soul before we send it to Hell," Dmitri snapped. "You're welcome."

"A soul purification spell? What the fuck is that?" Also, Dean was pretty sure you couldn't purifying his tattered soul with all the holy water and salt in the universe. He could picture it as a t-shirt stomped down in mud and engine grease until you could barely recognize it as a garment anymore."And I'm pretty sure Crowley wouldn't let me into Hell. We're kinda on the outs right now."

Dean was aware that they had all turned to look at him. "What?" Dmitri asked.

The woman, who looked kind of like a former cheerleader ten years on, who never quite got over losing her teenage queen bee status, said, "So those rumors about you and the King of Hell are true?"

Dean was about to ask which rumors - 'cause frankly, there were a lot, and Dean didn't remember most of them, but they all had a frightening plausibility - when the door opened, and a black haired Goth chick came in the room. "We got him," she said.

Dmitri barely glanced at her. "Baby brother?"

"Yep. Stupid bastard didn't know what hit him."

Fury bloomed in Dean, red hot and pulsing. It made his head throb more, and leaked red into the edge of his vision, but he no longer cared. He had powered through pain most of his life. Once more was nothing. "If you hurt Sam, I will kill you all."

The Goth girl came up to Dean, and put a hand on his cheek. He tried to duck it, but with his head held and a knife at his throat, he couldn't move. "Aww, poor baby. You're not leaving this room alive. But it's always good to have goals."

"I will come back, and hunt every fucking one of you down." He didn't know how right now, but he would.

She had her hand on his taped down wrist, which was why it was so surprising when he felt a tiny pinprick of pain. Was she cutting the tape? "Ooh, since he's about to die, can I do something?"

The pair writing on the wall in his blood went back to it. Dmitri, who was at least the leader of this group, glanced at her warily. "What do you want to do, Nevaeh?"

"Come on, he's so cute. I gotta." She grabbed his face and kissed him, which Dean refused to reciprocate, but that's when he felt the man behind him fall away, making a wet, gagging noise. The knife that had been at his throat fell into Dean's lap.

Nevaeh broke away from him, and threw an angel blade that she produced out of nowhere, skewering Dmitri right in the throat. Dean broke the rest of the tape holding his wrist, and grabbed the knife to quickly hack at the tape holding his ankles. He didn't know why Goth girl had flipped, and he didn't much care.

"Tom!" The woman shouted in alarm, as Sam came in the door. The man writing on the wall lunged at him with a knife, and Sam shot him in the chest.

Now the room had erupted in full blown panic. Most rushed Sam, but Nevaeh had regained her knife and was slashing throats like it was a contest for most kills a minute, and she intended to win. Dean had cut the last of the tape off his ankles when she turned to him with black eyes, and asked, "Hey Blue Steel, you want in on this or what?"

Jenny. He should have known.

Three guys, including two who just entered the room, managed to get Sam down and disarmed, but not for long. He'd lost a gun but still had his knife, which he used to stab one of them while kicking another across the room. Dean grabbed that one, and buried the knife in his back before tossing him aside like a piece of wet garbage. Maybe he'd live through it, and maybe he wouldn't. But they intended to kill both him and Sam, so fuck them.

Jenny stabbed another one in the head, and Dean heard her say, "And that's for Rocket, you shit sucking motherfucker." Dean suddenly wondered what happened to Rocket, beyond being murdered, because he got the definite impression something did.

Sam punched one man in the throat so hard he went down gagging and convulsing, while he kicked the other one in the face so hard blood went flying. Dean couldn't help but be proud of him as he grabbed a random cultist and slammed his head so hard into the side of the bed the railing fell off before the guy hit the floor. Now he could see how fun it was to his have a concussion, assuming he survived that.

Former cheerleader had realized how deeply fucked she was as the last bad guy standing, and ran out of the room. Jenny charged after her right away, angel blade raised. A few seconds later, there was a muffled shriek.

Dean helped Sam up to his feet, and then he hugged him, slapping him on the back. "You okay?" Sam asked.

"I'm alive. Which is more than we can say for most of these clowns. How about you?"

"Also alive. I'm not the one with the concussion."

They separated as Jenny returned to the room, tucking her angel blade in a pocket of her excessively zippered jacket. "Well, that was fun."

"Where the hell have you been?" Dean snapped. "Shouldn't you have been back way before now?"

She pointed at Sam. "Blame Stretch. I was looking for a vessel he wouldn't get his panties in a twist about. I never did find one, at least not in this corner of the state. I figured I'd been gone long enough, and I'd take anybody. Just in time, it turns out."

A guy on the floor groaned in pain, and Dean kicked him in the head, putting him down again. "We'd better get out of here. I'm surprised the gunshots didn't bring security in here."

Sam grimaced, collected his gun from the floor, and shared a look with Jenny that said Dean had missed something. "They might have been distracted by a disturbance in the parking lot. Which reminds me, we should really find a back way out of this place."

"Ooh, I know one," Jenny volunteered. "I checked out all the stiffs in this joint looking for a vessel. Come on."

Dean looked at Sam curiously. "Something I should know?"

"No. They just tried to kill me."

Dean started to shake his head, but had to stop, as he could feel the gravity shifting in his head like it was full of loose ball bearings. In fact, he wasn't sure when he stopped shaking his head, because it seemed like the world kept doing it for him.

Sam put an arm around his shoulders, and asked, "Do I want to know how many of these assholes you ended up fighting?"

"Probably not. Turns out, Sue was a bad ass."

"I'm glad one of them was."

Dean snickered at that, as Jenny left the room, heading out on the back exit search. Sam gave him a tremendous bit of side eye. "Are you high?"

He measured out about an inch with his thumb and forefinger, and admitted, "Tiny bit. Dude, next time you're in the hospital, flirt with the male nurses. They have the good shit."

Sam's lips twisted in a way that suggested he was trying not to smile, and failing. "I can't take you anywhere, can I?"

Dean was happy to lean against Sam and let him maneuver down the hall. You never knew how exhausting walking around with a concussion was until you tried to do it. "Don't slut shame me, man."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Sam replied.

See? That was a healthy attitude.

Jenny did find a back way out, through what was basically the exit for the janitorial staff, and Dean figured the parking lot fight must have been bad if Sam wasn't insisting he stay in the hospital. Although, to be fair, it probably wasn't a good idea to stay in a hospital with a ritualistic crime scene in it, especially after a gun was shot, and Dean did take part in a brawl in a staff room. Yeah, they needed to get out of here.

Somehow they managed to get to the car, dodging medical staff and cops that were now all over the place. As soon as they were in the car, Jenny chilling in the back seat, Dean said, "We hafta find out where these idiots make their home base. They don't even care about endangering innocents."

"Cas is working on it," Sam said, getting in the driver's seat. It was always weird for Dean to be in the passenger seat, but he had that helium/swimming thing going on right now in his head, and he had no idea how much longer he'd have his eyes open. Right now, everything looked like a heat mirage in the desert.

"Good." Dean glanced in the rearview at Jenny, who was keeping an eye on the cops. "Are we concerned about this vessel?"

Sam glanced back as well. "Considering she tried to kill me, I'm enjoying the irony right now."

Dean caught Jenny's eye. "You took her in the act? Awesome." He held up his hand, and got a high five.

Sam shook his head and sighed. "Can't take you anywhere."

Dean wanted to protest he would have enjoyed it whether he was stoned or not, but decided now was not the time. Maybe he'd wait until he was a hundred percent sure he wasn't going to barf.

He'd kick his own ass if he messed up his upholstery.


	10. Broken Glass Complexion

_**10 - Broken Glass Complexion**_

Sam knew he had to keep an eye on Dean for the next week or so, because concussions could have after-effects, and he didn't even want to think about how many shots to the head Dean took while fighting the cult. He wanted a beer, but considering how high Dean was, Sam didn't let him. He expected more of a fight about this, but he left his room to talk to Cas, and when he came back, Dean was asleep. It was probably for the best.

Cas had tracked down the most likely location of the cult, namely a small town in Wyoming named Stone Creek. Cas hedged his bets, pointing out several things that told Sam this made him a bit nervous. He didn't want him and Dean to tackle this on their own; he was adamant he needed to be a part of the team when they took them on. It sounded like Cas was taking this a little personally. Wait until he found out Dean was hurt. He'd burn that entire town down.

Sam agreed that they'd come get him before they did anything. It was the least they could do, and besides, he was right. Going up against an angel, it was good to have one in your corner.

He briefly researched where the naga tunnel might come out, but found no signs it followed town geography at all, and quickly gave up. If anyone could keep that amulet away from the bad guys, it was going to be the naga. He wrote up a report to add to the files back at the bunker, since no one had a lot of solid intelligence on them. At least Sam got to add that it was a lot bigger than you'd think, and probably not evil, or at least not malicious. Protective of what it viewed as theirs, sure, but you could say that about humans too. Despite that, he added a note that they should be avoided at all costs. The fact that it didn't kill him and Dean when it had at least one extremely easy shot was proof of a general benevolence. No demon would have let that opportunity slide past.

Once they got back to the motel, Jenny took off, supposedly to see if there were any cult stragglers - other than her vessel - left in town. It felt a bit like a lie, and Sam got the impression she wanted to avoid him. Why? Because, while he did appreciate the save, and the irony that one of the "pure" easily got possessed by a demon, a counterpoint to their smug beliefs, he still wanted her out of that girl. Yes, she'd made some poor choices, but it might not all be on her. There might be a family obligation here. Still, he'd have to look past the attempted murder thing. And yet ... Sam didn't find it completely unforgivable. She thought they were the enemy; maybe she was brainwashed. How was he to know?

The adults he found much harder to forgive. They were willing to hurt countless people to get to them, which he hesitated to call insane, because even people with mental illness knew a right from a wrong in most cases. It was evil. Maybe when you felt so righteous in your cause, nothing you did in the service of that cause could be wrong? You had to get pretty far up your own ass to feel that way, but Sam had encountered hunters who felt that way as well. If you followed it to its logical conclusion, that was a scorched earth policy, otherwise known as destroying a village to save it. Fucking ridiculous.

Sam checked on Dean again, just to make sure he was okay. He knew there were several schools of thought on treating concussions, including not letting victims of one sleep, although others thought they needed their rest. He figured it didn't matter as long as he kept an eye on him, which probably meant he was in for a long night.

Sam felt restless, so he walked to the corner store, bought some beer, and came back to the motel and climbed on the roof. He knew you weren't supposed to, but he also knew if you were stargazing, it was best to get as high as you could.

This wasn't a big town, so it didn't have city caused light pollution, and it wasn't long before he could see the stars peeking out from the black. The stars were always slightly different, and always beautiful in the same way. He missed doing this.

Sam enjoyed the view for a while, but his mind wandered back to the Darkness, and what they were going to do. He honestly didn't know. He still had no ideas. They would figure out something; they usually did. But what if they didn't?

He idly wondered if he could get the naga in on this fight, and smiled. Now there was a battle he'd paid to see.

* * *

Maybe it wasn't great that he slept eighteen hours? But Dean had to admit, he felt a lot better when he finally woke up. He had a really mild headache, like maybe he was starting to go through caffeine withdrawal, but that was easily solved.

Sam was still asleep when he woke up, but rather than wake him - he must have gone to bed super later if Mr. Early Riser wasn't up and annoying him by now - Dean got dressed and went to local coffee shop, where he got Sam his plain black coffee (so boring), and got himself a triple espresso a/k/a crack, because he felt he could use the jolt. While waiting for his coffee, he encountered a familiar figure: a girl in black lipstick, wearing shiny patent leather combat boots and a jacket with far too many zippers. Jenny.

"Haven't swapped vessels yet?" Dean asked.

Jenny shook her head. "What happens with this one when I do? Is she going to go running back to the cult?"

Dean shrugged. "If she does, all she can really do is warn them we're coming. I don't think it'll help."

"Are you sure you don't want me to ..." Jenny made a throat cutting gesture with her hand.

He scowled at her. "No. We don't kill kids."

"She's nineteen. Does that count as a kid?"

"Teen is in the name. Yes. And I expected better from you."

Jenny barked a surprised laugh. "Holy shit, Winchester, have you met me?"

Should he just do it? Yeah, he might as well. Why play the game any longer? "Which one were you?"

Jenny looked back at him, confused. "What?"

"Adnachiel, Eiael, Mendrion, Omael, or Zaazenach? Sam takes copious notes. I bet you didn't know that. I tried to see if I could match up Countess, Jazz, Marquis, Rocket, Sunny, and Jenny , but I realized the numbers didn't add up. Which is curious, but I figured you had an explanation for that."

Jenny tried to poker face him. It wasn't working. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Winchester."

"Should I get Cas on the phone, ask his opinion?"

She closed her eyes and huffed a sigh through her nose. "If I was an angel turned demon, why the fuck would I risk encountering you guys again? You have an angel with you, for fuck's sake."

"Because you wanted revenge for your friends. And for some reason, you were warning me."

She shook her head, and leaned against the counter. "Ridiculous. Why would I warn you?"

"I don't know. But they really had a hard on for me after the Mark of Cain business. You had to know that. We had no idea they were coming for me. But you did."

She glared at him. "Angels aren't benevolent. They're fucking assholes. Except Castiel. I mean, he had a big asshole streak in him, but ... he felt more than the rest of them, that was for damn sure. I heard stories. Some of the bigger assholes would make fun of him behind his back. Soft-hearted is the same as soft-headed to an angel."

"Which one were you?" Dean asked again.

She rubbed her eyes. "Eiael. Shit, following Lucifer was so fucking dumb. But I was tired of taking orders that made no sense, for a God I never saw. I mean, blind obedience wears on you after a while."

Dean scoffed. "Preach, sister." He never tried to explain it to Sam, but doing everything their Dad said was how he was keeping Sam alive when they were kids. He had to believe that, because otherwise he would have had to admit he didn't know what to do, and felt lost and scared most of the time. But sometimes he wanted to push back, to stop, to ask Dad if he had a genuine fucking plan or was just flying by the seat of his pants. He didn't, though. Not a lot. He knew now he should have, but it no longer mattered.

She attempted a smile, but it collapsed almost immediately. "Yeah, you would know, wouldn't you? Maybe that's why I liked you. You kinda get it."

"You know, Cas would probably be glad to see you."

She shrugged and shook her head. "I know. But I don't think I can face him again, you know? I was lucky the first time. He was mostly mind controlled by Bacchus, and I wasn't around long after he came back. I was afraid he'd know who I was, even though I knew logically that wasn't possible."

"We all make mistakes," Dean said. "Ask me about the Mark of Cain. But all we can do is learn from them, and try not to fuck up so badly next time."

She stared at him a moment. "You getting philosophical in your old age, Winchester?"

"Old? I'm not even mid-life crisis age. Unless you're going by hunter years, then I'm fucking ancient. How old are you?"

"A lady never tells her age. You should know that."

"Are you a lady?"

"Today. Maybe not tomorrow."

His coffee order came up, and while he grabbed Sam's, Jenny grabbed his, and took an uninvited sip of it.

"Hey," Dean protested.

She bugged her eyes out slightly, and handed it to him. "Jesus Christ. Is that a lethal amount of caffeine? You and your brother couldn't be more different."

"He like his coffee utilitarian. I figure if it ain't rocket fuel, what's the point?" Dean wondered when she tried some of Sam's coffee, and figured it didn't matter. Maybe she bugged Sam much like she was bugging him now. "By the way, are you gonna explain the sixth name?"

"Oh. Sunny is - was - an actual demon. One of the few that was nice to us when we first ended up in the pit. Sunny was kind of weird for a demon."

"It happens. I've met some weird angels too."

That teased a small smile out of her. "You be good to Cas, huh? Don't break his heart. And tell him I'm glad he escaped Heaven. This last century or so, it's lost its fucking mind."

"It seems like everything's lost its mind." He took a sip of his coffee. Yeah, that was a punch of caffeine right between the eyes. Perfect.

"That is the ultimate curse of existence," Jenny said, looking at the street outside the coffee shop. There was nothing remarkable going on out there, so Dean figured she was thinking of something and letting her gaze wander. "If you live long enough, you live to see entropy eat everything."

"Holy shit, that's dark."

"I'm a demon. We don't do happy." She reached into her coat pocket, and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which she held out to him.

He had to put one of his cups down on an empty table to take it. "What's this?"

"Where Nevaeh is staying. Maybe you and Sam can drop in, see if you can talk some sense into her after I'm gone. Or at least make sure she doesn't off herself for being impure enough to be possessed by a demon."

That was remarkably considerate of her. Sam would be glad for this. Dean nodded, and slipped it in his pocket. "Maybe you being a former angel will make it better."

She scoffed. "It shouldn't. I think we're worse than normal demons, because we know what the other side was like."

"Do you miss it?"

"Heaven? Fuck no. I don't miss Lucifer either. He was a gigantic bag of dicks."

"The fucking biggest," he agreed, having another fortifying sip of his coffee. The last lingering fog in his head was clearing nicely.

She kissed him on the cheek, and said, "Say bye to Sam for me. And tell Cas -" she said something in Enochian, but he had no hope of understanding it, or even getting a solid grasp on the syllables.

"You know I can't say that," he protested. "What does it mean?"

She smiled. "No gods, no masters."

He smiled in return. "My new epitaph."

"Fuck yeah. Take care of yourself, Winchester. Try not to get possessed by any more ancient evils."

"Working on it," he told her, as she walked out the door. She headed down the street without looking back.

Dean wondered if they could save Nevaeh from this stupid ass cult, and if it would all be worth it if they could.

Sometimes you could only save one person, and that had to be good enough.

* * *

 _The End_


End file.
